Quote:
Originally Posted by Ric
I was reading about the Boltzmann brain out of the future timeline, that I find very confusing.
Suposedly a brain or self aware entity will randomly appear within the universe.
That one is way out of my league.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain |
What it's basically saying is that given enough time, a self aware entity will appear out of the random fluctuations which occur within spacetime. Given that despite the 2nd law of thermodynamics (that entropy of any closed system will always increase), random (stochastic) fluctuations within spacetime (and hence the entropy of that spacetime) will produce an entity that will be self aware.
It's a blending of chaos and the anthropic principle, if you will. Chaos Theory states that you cannot determine the future outcomes within a system because it's impossible to state with any certainty what the initial conditions of such a system were...and the system itself is sensitive to those initial conditions. The Anthropic Principle basically states that the conditions that produced us within this Universe must be here because we are here to observe them. In other words, the Universe is here because we are here to observe it.
Now, we know that the 2nd law of thermodynamics states entropy (disorder) within a closed system will always increase. That being the system will try to move towards a state of equilibrium with itself...the present system of things being ordered and in disequilibrium. So, if you look at any system obeying the 2nd Law, it's more likely you will see small and discrete fluctuations towards equilibrium than one large one, or many large ones. Small fluctuations with little organisation (order) are more common in systems where entropy increases than large fluctuations which produce more highly ordered states. However, our existence would suggest that large, random fluctuations do occur (AP selection bias). Nevertheless, the fact being that small fluctuations are more common than large ones would suggest that if a highly ordered system can produce many self aware entities, then the greater likelihood of the smaller fluctuations in a highly entropic (less complex and disordered) system have a better chance of producing a single sentient entity within such a system, hence the Boltzmann Brain.
