It's all fine and well to say "thermal noise" but if you allow for brains to be built from thermal noise with any sort of frequency, you end up with the bigger philosophical problem of Boltzmann brains.
I agree that Boltzmann brains are a philosophical problem, but they're a problem precisely because our current best physical theories tell us that brains can fluctuate into existence. I don't think the right way to deal with the problem is to say, "Boltzmann brains are problematic, so let's just deny that they can exist."
but they're a problem precisely because our current best physical theories tell us that brains can fluctuate into existence.
Yes, but our current best physical theories also mean that they probably fluctuate into existence considerably less often than they form under normal circumstances (human brains, at least). A mind is a complex thing, so the amount of information it takes to replicate a mind is probably far higher than the amount of information it takes to specify an environment likely to give rise to a mind. If you discard the causal process that g...
Despite being (IMO) a philosophy blog, many Less Wrongers tend to disparage mainstream philosophy and emphasize the divergence between our beliefs and theirs. But, how different are we really? My intention with this post is to quantify this difference.
The questions I will post as comments to this article are from the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. If you answer "other" on any of the questions, then please reply to that comment in order to elaborate your answer. Later, I'll post another article comparing the answers I obtain from Less Wrongers with those given by the professional philosophers. This should give us some indication about the differences in belief between Less Wrong and mainstream philosophy.
Glossary
analytic-synthetic distinction, A-theory and B-theory, atheism, compatibilism, consequentialism, contextualism, correspondence theory of truth, deontology, egalitarianism, empiricism, Humeanism, libertarianism, mental content externalism, moral realism, moral motivation internalism and externalism, naturalism, nominalism, Newcomb's problem, physicalism, Platonism, rationalism, relativism, scientific realism, trolley problem, theism, virtue ethics
Note
Thanks pragmatist, for attaching short (mostly accurate) descriptions of the philosophical positions under the poll comments.
Post Script
The polls stopped rendering correctly after the migration to LW 2.0, but the raw data can be found in this repo.