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James_Miller comments on You are (mostly) a simulation. - Less Wrong
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Why are you in a simulation and not a Boltzmann brain? If the universe goes on forever after heat death, then there will be an infinite number of Boltzmann brain yous.
I see a coherent, justified universe around me with apparently sound perceptions. Therefore, I conclude that it is overwhelmingly more likely that something is wrong with your reasoning/assumptions than I am a Boltzmann brain.
Seriously, Boltzmann brains are never ever the answer. Why do people keep using them?
Seeing a coherent, justified universe is just a restriction on what kind of Boltzmann brain you are. There is a very simple calculation here (if you've ever taken introductory thermodynamics) and it goes like this:
In an infinite universe, the likelihood of existing in some "macroscopic state of the world" like "your brain is inside your body on the earth in the solar system" or "your exact brain is floating inside a cloud of disordered gas the mass of the solar system" is proportional to how many "microscopic states of the world" correspond that that macroscopic state, where a microscopic state means writing down the states of all the subatomic particles and what they're doing. (This is the assumption that the universe reaches thermal equilibrium).
And because the solar system is so orderly (it's not at maximum entropy), there are many, many, many, MANY more possible microscopic states corresponding to a macroscopic state like "your brain is floating inside a cloud of disordered gas" than there are to the actual states corresponding to a real solar system.
Thus, if Boltzmann brains exist, you probably are one. And if you have an infinite universe that reaches thermal equilibrium, they exist.
Conversely, if I'm not a Boltzmann brain, then it's because the universe happens to not reach thermal equilibrium (e.g. the universe ends, or expands so fast that everything cools to the ground state eventually, or there exists some method of violating the second law of thermodynamics).
I don't understand much of this. My argument is that Boltzmann brains would almost certainly experience chaos. So I would have to be in the 0.000000000000000000001% of Boltzmann brains to observe a rational universe (not to mention one that actually predicts the existence of Boltzmann brains). Yes, the rational Boltzmann Brains actually would outnumber their regular counterparts, but that's talking past the problem. The odds are astronomically higher that something is wrong with your science. Maybe FAI figures out how to create negentropy, or breaks out into another universe, or finds a way to have infinite computing power. You suggested some options yourself. All of these have a probability considerably higher than 0.000000000000000000001%.
The idea that you are Bolzmann brain is of the same level of dangerous ideas as your interpretation of Dust theory. Basically it is the same theory. I spent unpleasant evening once thinking that I may be Bolzmann brain. But I solve it after I decided that information theory of personal identity is true, and so the number of copies does not matter, if at least one of them continue its existence.
The fact that you are BB does not exclude the fact that you are in simulation as there are special class of BB - that is Bolzmann supercomputers. It is an AI that appears from nothing and creats a simulation of our world. I think that this may be dominating class of BBs (by number of human observers). It also solves the problem of orderly world view around us.
Interesting. If you have time please elaborate.
I was planning to write a post about one day...
Basically the idea is that between ordinary BB and real brains exist third class of objects. These objects temporary appear from fluctuation but are able to create very large number of minds during its short existence. These objects are more complex than ordinary brain and thus more rare, but as they are able to creates many minds, the minds inside these objects will dominate. At first I named these objects "Bolzmann typewriters" but later I understood that it could be just a computer with a program which is able to create minds. (And as simulated mind is simpler than biological brain, which include all neurons and atoms, such simple simulated minds must dominate.)
Another type of Bolzamnn typewriter are universes fine tuned to create as many minds as possible (and even our universe is a type of it.)
If we are in Bolzmann typewriter or Bolzmann supercomputer it may have observable consequences, like small "mistakes in the matrix". It also may have abrupt end.
You're operating under the assumption that only humans count as observers, which is almost certainly not true and breaks the whole theory down.
(Btw, if such complicated things can exist in high-entropy environments, than why aren't we able to survive there after heat death? Unless we're talking about quantum permutations?)
In fact, I think that only humans who are able to understand Doomsday Argument should be counted as observers... :) But where I use this idea here?
Yes, may be we can survive after heat death in such fluctuation and in my recent roadmap "How to survive the end of the Universe" it was suggested.
All I'm saying is that out of all possible observers that would arise in a Boltzmann state, ours is a long way from the most common.
Why?
When I search my position in the class of observers that are like me, the only thing which is define this class of observers is that it is able to write down and understand this sentence. And I should not count the ones who are not able to understand it, because I already know that they are not me. In short: If one ask "Why I am not a worm?", the answer is: because a worm can't make this question.
So the right question would be in case of BB: "from all observers who could think that they are in BB, am I most common or not?" The answer depends on how random our circumstances are. My surrounding seems to be not so random as TV signal noice: I sit in my room.
The problem is that we can't take for granted that BB could judge randomness of their surroundings adequately. For example: in a dream you may have a thought and think that it is very wise. But in the morning you will understand that it is bullshit.
So, in fact, we have a class of observers, which now defined by two premises: the thought: "Am I a BB" and the observation: "My surrounding seems to be not enough random for BB" (which may be untrue, but we still think so)
Now we could ask a question where is the biggest part of this subset of observers? And even for this subset of observers we still have to conclude that its biggest is in BB.
Personally, I think that it is just a problem of our theory or reality, and if we move to another reality theory, the problem will disappear. The next level theory will be theory of qualia universe. But there may be other solutions: if we take linear model of reality than only information is identity substrate but not continuity, and so copies are smothly add up to one another.
But if the question has nothing to do with whether or not you understand it? Taking the DA as our example, the only thing you ought to be concerned about is what human are you. I don't see why comprehension of the DA is relevant to that.
And our knowledge of BBs comes solely from a long series of assumptions and inferences. If most observers are Boltzmann brains, than most observers, of whatever type, will experience chaos. If you're going to say that that might not be true because BBs are deluded, I have to ask why the same doesn't apply to the argument that we might be BBs. It's a great deal more complicated than my own argument, which is that chaos is more common than order.
Why not assume an evil daemon, if we're going to reason this way?
So our laws of physics seem consistent because this requires less code.