Boltzmann Brain Formation

Quoting Devans99

- Much more likely to occur is an event that makes other events impossible

The problem with infinity: No matter which point on the time-line, there has always been an infinitely long period before that.

Yes but then there has been an infinite amount of time for the probability space to shrink:

- Things that are impossible can’t become possible
- Things that are possible can become impossible
- So the probability space shrinks with time
- So infinite time does not make everything possible

Reply to Devans99 You are not offering a counter-argument, you are denying the premise - two premises in fact: that time is infinite and that infinite time provides sufficient probabilistic resources for Boltzmann brains to dominate the set of observers.

But this is rather beside the point anyway, because the Boltzmann brain scenario gets most of its probabilistic resources not from infinite time but from infinite space.

I’m accepting time is infinite (for the sake of this argument)

Infinite space does not matter because then the Boltzmann brains are almost infinitely far away from us so they cannot effect us.

We needed infinite time to produce local Boltzmann brains which is impossible as shown above.

Anything that can happen will happen is wrong - at least when you take into account the event horiqzon.

Boltzmann Brains have held a nearly infinite fascination in my studies and writings. As we are able to satisfactorily trace our lineage and our general universal history, I feel it safe to posit that we were not spontaneously generated. To perfectly form such evidence from mere chance would be yet more unfathomable still. As cosmologists can now accurately, to some extent, trace the cosmos’s evolution to only several milliseconds proceeding the Big Bang, thirteen point eight billion years of development could not reasonably be coincidental save for in the most extravagant imagining. Our universe, being less than fourteen billion years of age, has not had sufficient time to develop such miribilia. Based upon Occam’s Razor, it is most reasonable to presume that we are not Boltzmann Brains. A Boltzmann brain such as an entire cosmos is reliant upon so many coincidences and assumptions that such belief would rationally open, and even necessitate, belief in equally absurd others.

I do not know that any satisfactory experiments could be made to detect such a universe. As our Boltzmann Brain is an unfalsifiable axiom, is it not better that we bolster that which can be reasonably proven or discarded? Scientific inquiry requires observation and evidence. Other unfalsifiable claims, such as the existence of a deity, and other noumenon, create the same hazard of illogic.

However, I have relatively little knowledge of the Boltzmann problems, nor what paradoxes they might overcome. Is it possible that, with infinite time, everything can occur? How should we define all possibilities, and according to what laws? While this universe consists of time and space, what of other possible fabrics in which other events might occur, although events seem to necessitate the presence of spacetime? Are there states other than existence and nil? While these questions deviate from Boltzmann speculation, I find it exceedingly difficult to contemplate all possibilities without questioning the nature of possibility or being.

Quoting Devans99

Much more likely to occur is an event that makes other events impossible

How do you come to this conclusion?

Boltzmann brain:

1. A brain is a low entropy state
2. Entropy always increases
3. It is NOT impossible for a system to assemble into a low entropy state BUT this is extremely unlikely
4. Given enough time every possible state of matter will actualize (despite near-zero probabilities)
Therefore
5. Boltzmann brains are possible
6. Boltzmann brains are simpler states of matter than human beings
Therefore
7. Boltzmann brains are more likely than human beings
Therefore
8. The most common conscious beings in the universe are Boltzmann brains