What is a Boltzmann Brain?
In: Physics
As far as modern neuroscience can tell (at least if you are have a physicalist view of the brain), the subjective world we experience is a construct of the brain. As a result, if you were able to build an exact copy of your own conscious human brain all the way down to the lowest possible levels of structure, this brain would have an internal experience indistinguishable from yours. At least, this is one possible interpretation of neuroscience.
Forget that idea for a second. Now, think about how we see a universe around us that seems extremely unlikely in terms of entropy. Of all the possible configurations that the particles comprising the universe could be in, it’s very unlikely that everything would be found in such an organized configuration. Further, since entropy tends to increase over time, we know that the early universe was in an even less likely state (in terms of being lower entropy).
Given these two ideas, which is more likely:
* an entire universe randomly fluctuated into the very unlikely and organized configuration we see around us
* only a single brain (yours) randomly fluctuated into existence as a “naked” brain in space, and all around this brain is random disorder
This problem in cosmology is called the Boltzmann brain problem. A Boltzmann brain is just the “naked” brain in space described in the problem above. The problem is that statistically speaking it’s much more likely for a brain’s worth of particles to randomly fluctuate into an organized configuration than an entire universe. Cosmology people of reddit feel free to correct me about any of this.
Due to the random movement of atoms over countless eons, there will be a point where the atoms randomly align such that it forms a functional brain.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kap03/eli5_the_boltzmann_brain/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kap03/eli5_the_boltzmann_brain/)
Someone did the work for us already, saves a lot of typing 🙂
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