David_Gerard comments on Boltzmann Brains and Anthropic Reference Classes (Updated) - Less Wrong

-4 Post author: pragmatist 04 June 2012 04:04AM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 04 June 2012 10:12:28AM -1 points [-]

What I don't get is why people even bother spending time discussing such nonsense seriously, let alone make meaningless claims like this.

Sure you do: the observed phenomenon that many things that philosophers consider major problems are artifacts of human cognitive psychology. c.f. p-zombies. The bad philosophy in question does not survive because it says anything about the physical universe, but because its proponents refuse to be convinced their claimed problem is not a problem.

tl;dr when philosophers claim they've come up with something that says something about physics, they've generally failed to realise that the ancient Greeks deciding to concentrate on pure thought and eschew experimentation was an error.

Comment author: pragmatist 04 June 2012 10:18:21AM *  2 points [-]

Philosophers did not come up with the Boltzmann brain problem. Most discussion of the problem that I am aware of is in the physics literature. Of course, your diagnosis may still be accurate. Many contemporary theoretical physicists also fall into the trap of concentrating on pure thought and eschewing experimentation.