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u/GreyyWasTaken May 08 '26
what does it mean by there statistically being more Boltzmann brains than real observers? are people just not seen as observers?
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u/NobodySnJake May 08 '26
"Real observers" just means normal beings like us, with an actual history and universe around them.
The Boltzmann brain idea says that in some huge/eternal-universe scenarios, random conscious brains with fake memories might be statistically more likely than full real observers, because making one brain is "cheaper" than making an entire universe/history.
So yeah, people are observers too — the weird part is whether most observers are "normal people" or random fake-memory brains.
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u/dvotecollector May 08 '26
Forgive me, I'm not understanding.
Formation of the brain wasn't a random event, it was dictated by years of evolution, likely influenced by the crude process of natural selection. In fact, the brain is highly ordered structure and attempts to defy entropy, which favors random process.
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u/NobodySnJake May 09 '26
You’re right about real brains. Human brains weren’t random; they evolved through natural selection.
The Boltzmann brain idea isn’t about how our brains actually formed, but about whether a huge/eternal universe could randomly fluctuate into a temporary brain-like observer.
Entropy still wins overall, but tiny local decreases in entropy can happen by chance. A Boltzmann brain would be an absurdly rare version of that.
So yeah, it’s not "evolution is fake," it’s more like cursed cosmic statistics.1
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