Yes but over the course of the universe (which is still very young at 14 billion years old), there could be virtually infinite numbers of simulations and Boltzmann brains, but only one original biological brain.
Arguments against:
- Every computer made so far “crashes” and needs to be rebooted once in a while.
- A mind has not yet emerged from a computer program.
- The base universe would need quite a contraption to be running all of these hypothesized simulations.
A Boltzmann brain isn’t a simulation. It’s very, very basically an acknowledgement of the fact that if you have a bunch of random particles in a given area, due to sheer chance they will eventually line up in precisely a way that creates something approximating a thinking brain. If you conjecture an infinite universe or alternatively an infinite number of finite universes, the probability that Boltzmann brains exist is greater than the probability that ‘meat brains’ exist; therefore, it’s more probable that we’re a random alignment of atoms hanging out in space than we’re a ‘meat brain.’ The counter-argument is simply that there are not an infinite number of universes and that this particular universe is finite. That though causes other people to panic at our sheer improbability.
It is even more improbable that billions of B-brains coalesced on an earth that also just happened to coalesce and everything around it all jibes with everyone’s memory. My argument that no mind has ever emerged from a computer becomes: no collection of particles has ever yielded mind, unless it is an animal brain, in which case we run into the argument of is there something like a “soul”. This question has not been settled.
Every computer in this universe. We know nothing about any hypothetical other universe.
In this universe. We know nothing about any hypothetical other universe.
We know nothing about any hypothetical other universe. Seriously.
How do you know that this simulation was not just restarted from a saved point?
Probably because they don’t want us to figure out we’re in a simulation, so the simulator is purposefully thwarting our efforts.
I don’t think there can be a debate unless we make some assumptions about the hypothetical universe. My basic underlying assumption was: things we suspect or know about computers in this universe would also be true in the hypothetical universe(s).
Except, how do you know that great big universe is more unlikely than a single brain? Did you use your brain to arrive at that conclusion? If you’re just a random brain that popped into existence out of quantum fluctuations, what are the odds that your brain understands how the universe actually works?
If you’re just a random quantum fluctuation, you wouldn’t be able to meaningfully hypothesize about the universe, because your understanding of the universe would be nothing like the real universe. So if you’re a Boltzmann brain, you have no good reason to suspect that Boltzmann brains are a hypothetically possible thing. It’s only if you’re a real brain that evolved in such a way that it can partially understand the universe that you could meaningfully hypothesize about the likelihood of Boltzmann brains.
The point is, if all your sensory inputs and memories and thoughts are just a jumble assembled at random, then nothing you sense or remember or think means anything. The universe you think you inhabit is nothing at all like the real universe, because why would it be? So how likely is the Big Bang creating a universe? If you’re a Boltzmann brain you have no idea, because you don’t even know if the Big Bang is a thing, or anything about the physical character of the universe. You’re just having a hallucination of some strange reality, and that will be over soon enough when your brain collapses back into the quantum foam of the real universe, of which you know nothing, including whether quantum foam is a thing in that universe.
You don’t know that billions of brains did happen to coalesce. There might just be ‘you’ sitting in the ether dreaming the dreams of a brain sitting in the ether. You may have sprung into existence 15 seconds ago and just believe that you are 30 years old or whatever. The counter-argument of ‘What are the chances?’ is the same as when someone points out the improbability of the universe as we know it existing.
It’s true that we don’t “know.” You seem hung up on this, as if not knowing something for sure stop everything. It doesn’t.
It is reasonable to guess that if we are in a simulation than our simulation bears a resemblance to reality. We might even guess that we are in a historical simulation and that our world very closes resembles the historic world of the underlying reality on which it is based.
We take what we know, or think we know and we extrapolate and see if we can come up with testable hypotheses or if those extrapolations present any useful info or suggestions.
It is of course possible that we are in an abstract simulation that bears absolutely no resemblance to underlying reality. There are some reasons to think that that is less likely than a simulation with things in common with reality, but it’s possible. We reject it because it tells us nothing useful.
If we guess that the simulation is similar to reality than that gives us insights which are potentially useful.
Well then I am a lot smarter than my “memories” suggest. In an instant I derived all the mathematics I have studied. An equation I saw and then proved with great effort was one the smarter me instantly derived. I instantly arrived at the pythagorean theorem, for instance. I randomly happened to think I saw it in a book first. And then when I was able to prove it years later, the delay was because I forgot the proof after the initial instant, or decided to withhold it from myself.
There’s a fun sci fi book called Millenium by John Varley. It’s hero engages in just such logic as we’ve discussed.
If you start with the premise that time travel may be possible and that time travelers may be visiting this time, you can actually build up a surprisingly robust stream of suppositions about what they can do why they are doing it, what constraints are upon them, where you should look to find them, etc.
Than you can go and do those things and see if your hypothesis looks correct.
Similarly if you start with the propositions:
-
At some point in time technology will develop to allow simulations indistinguishable from reality
-
Entities at that time will be interested in historic simulations.
Than -
We are almost surely living in an historic simulation since there will be many copies and instances of simulation but only one reality.
From there we can build up all kinds of interesting thoughts about how to find the “players,” how best to live in a simulation, and what you should look for in terms of clues that the world is simulated as opposed to real. Again, this is “useful” stuff in that it suggests courses of action and ways of gaining further insight and advantage. This makes it much better than simple saying “WE DONT KNOW”
My own WAG is that our universe is a closed system and the timeline and energy requirements for a Boltzmann brain are not possible.
The other option is that you just think you proved that theorem. It’s like when you have a dream and you read a book in your dream and you love the book, but then you can’t remember what the book said. But did your subconscious mind really create a good book for you to read and then you forgot it, or did your subconscious mind create the memory of having read a book you forgot, but there never was any such book?
If you’re a Boltzmann brain, then you didn’t really read any books or prove any theorems. You remember doing that, but your memory is faulty, it’s not even memory. You never did any such thing, your brain is just hallucinating that it did, and those theorems you remember would all just be gibberish if a real brain could ever look at them, which it can’t, because there are no real brains.
Or you could be a, you know, human being whose brain mostly works OK most of the time because your species evolved on a planet where a working brain was a survival advantage.
I just reproved the pythagorean theorem. It made sense. So if I am a B-brain, then I am a lunatic B-brain who thinks things make sense mathematically, but it is all gibberish.
I know I’m not a Boltzmann brain. I can see a universe around me; ergo I’m not a minimal conscious entity.
I think people aren’t quite getting the motivation behind the Boltzmann brain. Here’s possibly an easier way to look at it: why are there a bunch of galaxies instead of just one? A single galaxy is still more than enough to create the conditions leading to my current existence. But instead I observe a bunch of galaxies, most of which are really far away and barely have any causal influence on me.
A bunch of galaxies are, statistically, far less likely than a single one. And so if the universe began with a quantum fluctuation, we wouldn’t likely find ourselves in one that had billions of galaxies.
The Boltzmann brain just takes the thought experiment a few steps further, but that’s not important to the statistical argument it’s making. It could be any subset of the observable universe.
Without knowing actual probabilities what’s the point of saying x or y is more statistically likely?
Please justify literally any claim about any hypothetical universe separate from our own.
Knowing “for sure”? Okay, sure, you can hypothesize based on incomplete data. But I don’t think you quite get the degree to which we know nothing here. We’re talking about a hypothetical alternate universe where the only thing we can say with any certainty is that it produces simulated universes. Does it even have the same laws of physics? We don’t even know this, yet you’re arguing about what motivations there are for creating the simulation.
For instance, my computer can create a simulated universe. This universe is called “Minecraft”. While it has some certain similarities to the real universe, the simulated Minecraft universe is different in all sorts of ways. And in one extremely important way it is very different, in that no conscious minds are simulated within that universe. The creatures in Minecraft have behaviors that are less complex than a bacterium.
But we can easily imagine Minecraft 7.6, now with consciousness, where the villagers have consciousness, and the zombies seem as if they had consciousness but don’t have qualia so they actually don’t, although it’s impossible to tell from the outside. Now imagine the villagers in Minecraft speculating that they live in a simulation. What are they going to conclude about the universe that created the simulation they live in?
And you know, it is possible to create computers in Minecraft. Real working calculators and such, using Redstone. So we can easily imagine those Minecraft villagers building ever more complex Redstone machines, and finally building one complicated enough…to run Minecraft. Check. Mate.