Boltzmann brain: You may be living in your own simulated reality

The paradox of the Boltzmann Brain can really pull the rug from under you if you follow it to all of its logical and illogical extents. This mind-churning idea proposes that the world is quite possibly just an effect of your disembodied consciousness and doesn’t really exist. And your sense of self is just a statistical fluctuation. It’s something that is more likely to come into existence by chance than the Universe that would have had to produce it.

So are you really a Boltzmann Brain? Let’s look at the underlying thinking.

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[Physicist Ludwig Boltzmann believed] it would be more likely for random quantum fluctuations in nature to create something simpler than our astounding Universe – for example, a self-aware entity that believes it is a person in a world full of people, history, and particular physics. But such a person – let’s say you – is only full of all the knowledge and experiences because you are made that way by the fluctuation that created you. There is nothing really there but your self-awareness.

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Debates of the idea persist, however, especially as it is hard to disprove. After all, if you were a Boltzmann Brain, everything that you could come up with to prove or disprove it would likely be because of the hallucinations your consciousness is having.

Read full, original post: Are you a Boltzmann Brain? Why nothing in the Universe may be real