Raenir Salazar posted:

The only counter argument as to whether we live in a simulation is also "I don't like that" as well, and so on. A lot of interesting thought experiments also aren't falsifiable with current methods.

Classon Ave. Robot posted:

I mean the ultimate issue with boltzmann brains or simulation theories is "who cares?".

It's very much possible that we live in a simulation or that anyone reading this may just be the momentary result of a quantum fluctuation in an empty universe, but... so what? That doesn't lead to anything actionable or meaningful, and once you're familiar with the basic idea of it it just becomes kind of a boring argument that has no applicable practice attached or interesting discussion to be had.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Is there any sort of actual mechanism where the universe would just stop existing after a certain number of years? Heat death is when all matter disperses and reaches perfect equilibrium but the idea quantum processes just stop eventually is really not a thing at all and would majorly violate everything we know. The only apparent argument against Boltzmann brains is pretty much “I don’t like that”

DrSunshine posted:

Doesn't NP-complexity, Godel's incompleteness theorem, and quantum randomness put hard limits on what can be accomplished with computers viz simulations, though? Or does that only matter if we're talking about the, say, supposed ability of a future civilization to create human mind simulations with perfect fidelity, virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from reality, etc., rather than the possibility that our own universe could be a simulation existing in such a computer?

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

You can say “who cares”about anything you want. It doesn’t change what is or isn’t true.

Raenir Salazar posted:

Classon Ave. Robot posted:

You're not really getting what I'm saying. What actionable difference does it make to anyone's life if we're in a simulation or the thought of a boltzmann brain? What is the logical procession of the argument if we accept that it is possible or even true? How does it matter to the life of a single person who exists?

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

But past that learning about physics enough to know if the universe will turn off eventually is as useful as any physics is. Even if finding out it just goes on forever does have the truly disconcerting truth embedded that the future is one of eternal ghostly appearances of half formed thoughts in between unfathomable quadrillions of years of silence.

Classon Ave. Robot posted:

If something is literally impossible to prove or disprove then it's not science though, it's just some nerds jerking off about a theory that makes them go "woah bet you never thought of that". It's neither true nor untrue, it's just a vacuous discussion, it's a rehash of a philosophical idea someone came up with 2500 years ago.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Pretty much every aspect of it could be proved or disproved. Like I guess if you are just a rotting space brain you couldn't. But every aspect underlying it would be perfectly testable things as much as anything in physics is. Like I guess it's a mystery on if you are a space brain, but every part of the physics is perfectly normal physics with no special magic elements.

Rappaport posted:

This is a really weird combination of sentences, to be honest. As useful as any? The point of the Fermi conversation is what humanity can observe, and even basic geophysics seems to tell us we won't be around to see any quadrillion-year thinkers. The whole idea behind cosmology sometimes devolving into a joke of itself is that, well, sometimes people get hung up on these grandiose ideas that in no way can be falsified or even studied. At that point it, or anything else like it, has left the realm of science and straight into science fiction. We may insist that Roko's basilisk or whatever is a "mathematical inevitability" and proceed from there, but that's still garbage in, garbage out, until we see one. Which we haven't. And the same holds for these Boltzmann brains, and as mentioned upthread, we're unlikely to hear from them anytime soon, so their existence, even if we insist it must be true, does not matter in the slightest, since we will never meet.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Is the heat death of the universe itself not science then? I will never meet that and no one can be around to test if it even happens in a personal way. We can only test physics to know it will happen.

Raenir Salazar posted:

I mean until we built particle accelerators we also didn't have much in the way of observation for subparticle physics no? There's a lot of physics and cosmology where it's a lot of numbers on paper but we don't necessarily have the tools to test it?

I don't think this isn't science, it's obviously still science; not everything has to have practical discrete applications like a tech on a in game tech tree.

Rappaport posted:

The science part is observing what is happening with the expansion (or possibly contraction!) of the cosmos, and that's about the extent of it. Presumably we both know that cosmology itself has had far weirder off-shoots that can never be observed, falsified or any such thing associated with science.

Paradoxish posted:

I don't know if it really makes much sense to talk about the falsifiability of Boltzmann brains, though? They're just a description of one consequence of the universe as we understand it.

Rappaport posted:

Right, but that's also the point of building said particle accelerators, so you can test and falsify ideas someone else wrote on paper. That's why we made the god drat things! I am not arguing that science is only there for building toasters.

e: For example, we could possibly build some kind of generation space ship, and try to visit a planet we think has unicorns on it, to try and find the unicorns. That's fine and good. But again, simply postulating the existence of the unicorn planet isn't really science. And even if we abandon popperianism, it still has no bearing on the Fermi question either, without that generation space ship, so it's a bit of a moot point, and that's what started this branch of the conversation to begin with.

Rappaport posted:

Right, but that's also the point of building said particle accelerators, so you can test and falsify ideas someone else wrote on paper. That's why we made the god drat things! I am not arguing that science is only there for building toasters.

e: For example, we could possibly build some kind of generation space ship, and try to visit a planet we think has unicorns on it, to try and find the unicorns. That's fine and good. But again, simply postulating the existence of the unicorn planet isn't really science. And even if we abandon popperianism, it still has no bearing on the Fermi question either, without that generation space ship, so it's a bit of a moot point, and that's what started this branch of the conversation to begin with.

Rappaport posted:

That's fair, and so is my unicorn planet, god damnit! The point I'm trying to badly make is that their existence, inevitable or not, doesn't really factor into what we can understand of the cosmos in the present or near future, so we could just as well table them for the time being.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

seems like the same particle accelerators also very much can help falsify things like "are quantum fluctuations real" and "is there a point in the future where they stop happening" and if the answers are "yes" and "no" then low probability events become very likely.

And this isn't just some sort of nerd navel gazing either. Literally one of the leading theories of why there is a universe right now is the idea that a bunch of energy sprung from quantum fluctuations and when you do the math the odds of that happening is unimaginably low, but the answer is "so what? who cared if it took a kajiliilionbillionmillion years, only humans care if things happen on a time scale we like, it had as much time as it needed to happen"

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I mean, okay, there probably was or will be or are unicorns in some universe. You seem to be angry that that would be the conclusion of this. Like you could say that a magical unicorn might not exist because it's magic would work against the known laws of physics and that is true, but given infinite space and time then sure, there is or was or will be a horse with a horn.

In fact a lot of your intuitions about what is and isn't is based on a human scale of time and space and a cosmic scale would have a lot different parameters than what is or isn't likely in a human scale. Every combination of matter physically possible will happen given enough time and space. Even ones that you don't like or ones that are silly. Really unlikely ones will take the most amount of time or require the most amount of area to happen, but things like that don't actually matter as far as we know. Eventually every configuration will iterate through an infinite amount of times.

Rappaport posted:

Yeah, but the limit (so to speak) on those theories is what we can observe (falsify), and that's why there's such a big brou-ha-ha about mapping the cosmic microwave background, for instance. But speaking in terms of what science can actually do here, we're pretty much stuck there, and cosmologists doing all sorts of funky fits for why the background looks the way it does, and so on. We can't, so far as we know today!, actually observe the original seconds/minutes of the cosmos. Whether or not this makes the theories about what happened back there just good guesses can be argued about, but on the other hand, the reason for the furious investigation of the microwave background is that some part of the scientific community seems to agree that we have to look at evidence and work from there. Hence, particle accelerators, so forth. Another fun though experiment is, could we start a whole new cosmos budding in a laboratory with a big enough particle cannon, but until we have such a cannon, it's just a fun idea.

Sodomy Hussein posted:

Thought experiments are fine, but un-falsifiable presumptions that a thing must happen, when challenged by data suggesting no, not really, are not strengthened by presenting further un-falsifiable claims of such boundless magnificence as "well, eventually a monkey will recreate the works of Shakespeare."

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I just can't tell what you are saying other than "if a bit of science means a silly result is possible we should not think about it ever again". But like, regardless of if you like or dislike some specifics about infinite time meaning brains or unicorns or whatever silly example you pick it is real science stemming from real questions.

Sodomy Hussein posted:

Thought experiments are fine, but un-falsifiable presumptions that a thing must happen, when challenged by data suggesting no, not really, are not strengthened by presenting further un-falsifiable claims of such boundless magnificence as "well, eventually a monkey will recreate the works of Shakespeare."

The answer to practical problems like:

(A) Physics doesn't support FTL

(B) Humans traveling in deep space are exposed to terrific amounts of radiation

(C) It's harder to slow a rocket down than to speed it up

... Isn't "well obviously we just have to wait for the above to become untrue, according to Philosophy 101"

You're talking to people ITT who have actually studied these problems and responding to them with pseudoscientific platitudes. "Anything/everything will eventually happen" is being used as a crutch to support what you hope will happen, absent all other evidence.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

With simulation stuff at least someone with a will has to have picked to do it. Like you can't say if it did happen or not, only it could and it might be likely. With this, you can say it WILL happen and there is no way to stop it from happening.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Unfalsifiable isn't just a magic word that means whatever. The claims are falsifiable. Using them to talk about unicorns or brains is very silly but that doesn't change anything. It's not like a monty python narrator is going to come in and say "these theories are true, but they stop being true if you say silly consensus of them!"

Communist Thoughts posted:

how would someone falsify the boltzman brains claim? set up an experiment that lasted 5x10^50 years or something?

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

The two parts are "quantum fluctuations can create particles spontaneously" and "there is no point in the future physics will stop operating" both of which are perfectly scientific questions. Once you have answered both there isn't any large leap to ask any "will an X be created" and having the answer be "yes, eventually" because there is no reason any combination of atoms would not eventually happen in some horrifyingly long amount of time. This has very upsetting consequences but that doesn't make it less true.

DrSunshine posted:

The problem is, though, that this conclusion, or thought exercise if you will, only really leads us in one direction:

A) Assume that Boltzmann brains will be created in the quantum fluctuations that occur in a very distant epoch of the universe

B) Given the law of large numbers, it's more likely that we are in a simulation of a universe existing within a Boltzmann brain or some long distant series of Boltzmann brains having flitting successive thoughts in inexorably immense eons of time.

And that's it. That's where it ends. Like, the only thing someone could do with that is go "Huh! Maybe." But it doesn't bring to light any new revelation about our presently existing universe. Like it doesn't matter for the intents and purposes of what is physically possible in our universe right now, or what the presently known physics of this universe could imply, whether it exists inside a simulation created by a Boltzmann brain, or whether it actually exists, because we can't tell the difference. From the perspective of observers on the inside of the universe, our universe existing as functioning as it does is all that matters, regardless of what is "maintaining" it. This is because we cannot get outside the universe to observe it or affect it.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I mean if you want you can tell me that dinosaurs don’t matter and you will never meet one so they aren’t worth thinking about if you want but that seems pretty dumb.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I mean if you want you can tell me that dinosaurs don’t matter and you will never meet one so they aren’t worth thinking about if you want but that seems pretty dumb.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I mean if you want you can tell me that dinosaurs don’t matter and you will never meet one so they aren’t worth thinking about if you want but that seems pretty dumb.