Thursday, April 09, 2009

Would Boltzmann brain see its universe chaotic?

This post is an reaction to another blog article of Lubos Motl, where he presents a Richard Feynman's lecture about arrow of time. At the beginning of the third part, Feynman explains, why Boltzmann brain is a "ridiculous theory", because it "incorrectly predicts", that the rest of the world should be completely disordered. We can see this as a another demonstration of Popper's methodology symmetry, where every negation of theory becomes new testable theory as well. So that not only validity of theory - but the validity of all arguments against theory must be allways checked carefully. If we consider every logical theory wrong from its very beginning, the objective stance becomes biased quite often.

As I explained previously here and specially to Lubos, Boltzmann brain hypothesis has nothing to do with situation, when 10^{23} particles will get organized suddenly into something like human brain. It describes the situation, when unspecified amount of particles is involved into Boltzmann brain creation. When we consider 10^{23*23} particles, the probability of formation of some particular configuration of just 10^{23} particles will be unitary - so we can say safely, the existence of human brain in every 10^{23*23} particles of matter will become undeniable. This number roughly corresponds the number of particles inside of observable part of Universe and the number of string theory possible solutions, which could serve for falsification of this concept. So we can interpret both Universe, both human brains entities as a product of random fluctuations of hypothetical particle gas - which is basically what the whole AWT is about.

Among other things, this approach explains, why every large group of people tends to check all meaningful answers and theories, before the most relevant one is considered at the very end. This is because the intelligent stance of individuals in every large group of people is compensating mutually, so that such group is behaving like chaotic Boltzmann gas as a whole. This can explain, why Aether theory was recognized so early in human society - but understood and accepted so late.

Every brain can see (i.e. to interact via transversal waves with) just the causal portion of Universe, which corresponds the causality of Boltzmann brain hypothesis - so we can expect, if we find an even more general approach later, it could predict even larger number of states, then the random walk model considers - our causual Universe would expand with time. Because of nested character of density fluctuations of Boltzmann gas - which undergoes a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution - our Boltzmann brains could never see the rest of our environment empty, "completely random" the less - particularly because both Feynman, both Motl didn't realize, their intepretation considers no environment at all. I do believe, virtually every human brain (including this one of average string theorist) could understand the difference between Boltzmann and Feynman approach to random Universe and stop to misinterpret this simple, yet powerful theory.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I get a real kick out of it .....
http://scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=30189&fpart=20
Zephir :
You can never prove, you explained something - so why are you wasting our time with some unfalsifiable claims again, and again?
TheFallibleFiend :
"You can never prove, you explained something - so why are you wasting our time with some unfalsifiable claims again, and again? "
It's pretty clear that you would not understand "proof." You have a strong tendency to talk about stuff you don't understand. No wonder you can't get serious scientists to pay attention to you, despite your efforts to get their attention by flooding the net with your ignorance. It's as obvious to them as it is to me that you don't know what you're talking about.

Zephir said...

Well - I can collect a dozens of similar proclamations on the net over the last two years. Despite of they're meant unreservedly often, they have no connection to the subject, they've quite general meaning and they can be applied against virtually everybody.

Therefore, such general proclamations cannot refute or confirm, what I'm saying at all. Maybe I even don't know what I'm saying, why not - but how it can refute my stance?

It's evident, these dummy proclamations are just trying to obtain psychological advantage in the eyes of other readers - it's the only way, by which people like You or TheFallibleFiend can fight against AWT concept in public, face it.

Ciudadano Kane said...

Zephir,

I've read your conversation with Lubos at the CIP's blog. Definitely, Lubos is not a gentleman. I think I know what is his problem, Lubos doesn't want to discuss anything with anyone. Lubos always want to be right, and when you contradict him, then he gets angry a lot. Maybe, he's or has been an excellent physicist, who has reached the top positions in the academia, and maybe he has published with the best string theorists, but when you write something and he doesn't agree with it, then he always insult you. You are right, nobody has ever shown that your claims are wrong. Maybe AWT hasn't got any new falsifiable predictions about nature, but string theory has the same problem.

Anonymous,

Sorry, but these dialogues don't mean anything against AWT.

Anonymous said...

No kidding? :-P
"Cheap Zephir, it's called "decorum" but I am afraid that you - or other stinky assholes - cannot be explained such things."
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/emeasure/1285591993347123985/?src=hsr

Zephir said...

From AWT follows, every product of long term evolution would consider its environment as best adopted to its life (anthropic principle). Therefore it's no so strange, formal mathematicians would see reality a highly organized, while free thinkers tends to more fuzzy description of reality.

http://tinyurl.com/cn8em6

Specialists often behave like blind ants, which follows well-established ways preferably. Their conservative nature follows from years spent in development of their qualification.

Sometimes may be useful for the rest of society to watch things from larger distance to see the optimal way in deeper context. Such view may accelerate the progress significantly - but the specialists aren't usually very happy from this. The existence of complex theories promotes their importance and enables them to survive quite comfortably like rentiers from taxes of other people. And every possibility of change in paradigm increases the risk, their tediously acquired knowledge will become useless.

In this way, every specialist becomes a brake of the further evolution undeniably in predictable way less or more lately by the same way, like particle nature of vacuum leads to formation of larger particles or even black holes. And mainstream science is full of highly qualified specialists isolated in their singularities. Less or more lately such specialists would lost their ability to exchange information with the rest of society at all.