1) the standard anthropic-probability difficulty. We have no clue if “disordered experience” is even a thing, let alone how common it it. each of us knows exactly one experience, and there’s no outside eye by which to compare them or choose among “possible” ones.
2) if you’re hypothesizing the minimal Boltzmann-brain experience, it doesn’t need an ordered universe. It just needs enough ordered spacetime for some 4-d bounding box to experience a MEMORY of what would be observed in an ordered universe.
(note: my intuition is that the universe is mostly real, and this isn’t an instantaneous experience of remembering my life and having typed up to here. but I can’t actually reason about it probabilistically, especially since I accept that probability is subjective—a measure of my ignorance).
The vastly more likely bounding boxes enclosing an experience-having entity are microscopically tiny and as disordered as possible while remaining consistent with the condition that it has an experience-having entity in it.
Although we don’t know what sort of constraints the “experience-having entity” condition imposes, it doesn’t seem likely that it so massively favours ordered experiences over disordered ones, to the extent that it can overwhelm the superexponential penalty on order in a system near maximum entropy.
Sure, but that would be an ordered experience that you interpret as noise. You can’t imagine what it’d be like for your neurons to fire randomly or for half of them to be disconnected.
Heck, you probably don’t even know what it’s like to be a rock. Or a talking silicon rock.
We have no clue if “disordered experience” is even a thing,
I have mildly disordered experiences on some mind-altering drugs (or at least memory of it) and I’ve seen some strong evidence that other beings have internal experiences (like you possibly), some of which seem to be disordered in more severe ways than what I have experienced and for longer duration.
some 4-d bounding box
The issue is that the larger the box the less likely to occur in random fluctuations. Extremely exponentially so.
The issue is that the larger the box the less likely to occur in random fluctuations. Extremely exponentially so.
Right. The minimal experience is probably a kilogram of matter for a few seconds. The extreme conception of a Boltzmann Brain is Solipsism x simulation-argument without the actual simulators. There is no “reality”, all of your consistent memories are an accident that lasts just long enough to register the experience.
You haven’t actually experienced anything in real-time—it’s all just an instantaneous memory.
I think this misses out on two key points:
1) the standard anthropic-probability difficulty. We have no clue if “disordered experience” is even a thing, let alone how common it it. each of us knows exactly one experience, and there’s no outside eye by which to compare them or choose among “possible” ones.
2) if you’re hypothesizing the minimal Boltzmann-brain experience, it doesn’t need an ordered universe. It just needs enough ordered spacetime for some 4-d bounding box to experience a MEMORY of what would be observed in an ordered universe.
(note: my intuition is that the universe is mostly real, and this isn’t an instantaneous experience of remembering my life and having typed up to here. but I can’t actually reason about it probabilistically, especially since I accept that probability is subjective—a measure of my ignorance).
The vastly more likely bounding boxes enclosing an experience-having entity are microscopically tiny and as disordered as possible while remaining consistent with the condition that it has an experience-having entity in it.
Although we don’t know what sort of constraints the “experience-having entity” condition imposes, it doesn’t seem likely that it so massively favours ordered experiences over disordered ones, to the extent that it can overwhelm the superexponential penalty on order in a system near maximum entropy.
I can easily conceive of ‘the experience I’m having now, except the left half of my visual field is noise’.
Sure, but that would be an ordered experience that you interpret as noise. You can’t imagine what it’d be like for your neurons to fire randomly or for half of them to be disconnected.
Heck, you probably don’t even know what it’s like to be a rock. Or a talking silicon rock.
I have mildly disordered experiences on some mind-altering drugs (or at least memory of it) and I’ve seen some strong evidence that other beings have internal experiences (like you possibly), some of which seem to be disordered in more severe ways than what I have experienced and for longer duration.
The issue is that the larger the box the less likely to occur in random fluctuations. Extremely exponentially so.
Right. The minimal experience is probably a kilogram of matter for a few seconds. The extreme conception of a Boltzmann Brain is Solipsism x simulation-argument without the actual simulators. There is no “reality”, all of your consistent memories are an accident that lasts just long enough to register the experience.
You haven’t actually experienced anything in real-time—it’s all just an instantaneous memory.