{"id":306,"date":"2008-01-21T12:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T12:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2008\/01\/21\/306\/"},"modified":"2013-02-04T19:40:34","modified_gmt":"2013-02-05T00:40:34","slug":"306","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Brainy Universes: Go Boldly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week’s Science Times<\/a> section of the NY Times made me aware of the \u201cBoltzmann Brain\u201d<\/a> concept. My goodness, how could I have lived so long and never have heard of it? It\u2019s a huge idea, a bold idea, way out there on the bleeding edge of cosmology and mathematics, wandering off into the field of epistemological philosophy and speculative metaphysics. It’s a Starship Enterprise kind of idea! <\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually too big an idea for me to properly explain here (and I probably don\u2019t fully understand it anyway). Nonetheless, just for fun, I\u2019ll try to describe it and make some observations regarding its theological implications. Whether I\u2019m right or wrong, the concept certainly does have much to do with life and consciousness and their relationship to the Universe and to all creation — whatever that is or isn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

We know that there is conscious self-awareness in the Universe; as Descartes said, if we know nothing else for sure, we do surely know of our own individual consciousness. We\u2019re also pretty sure from our scientific observations that conscious life occupies an incredibly tiny part of the Universe; it seems like nothing more than a small side show in a big carnival. The Universe is mostly made of thermonuclear-fueled galaxies and gravity-powered black holes and dark matter and vacuum space — incredible volumes of unoccupied space. Oh, and throw in dark energy; lots and lots of dark energy, causing those vast gobs of unoccupied space to expand at an accelerating pace. Relative to the vast Universe, intelligent, self-conscious life (i.e., the human race, and any other intelligent life out there) is like a little barnacle along the side of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. <\/p>\n

That does strike some people, including myself, as kind of odd. Wasn\u2019t there a more efficient arrangement for supporting sentient life, other than some huge, Big Bang-inflated Universe where we\u2019re just a tiny spec created by chance over eons of time? The Creationists think they have a better explanation, but I am not ready to throw centuries of scientific evidence and critical thought out the window, so I\u2019ll end any consideration of Creationism right here. <\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum of opinion regarding Biblical inerrancy, some physicists have speculated that there may be such a \u201cmore efficient arrangement\u201d for conscious life. They speculate first that the Universe that we observe and live in is just a small event happening on a much bigger stage; i.e., there is a much bigger reality where untold trillions and zillions of other universes come and go over unthinkable spans of time. In fact, they speculate that that this time span may be infinite. Our 13 billion year old Universe, and whatever may eventually happen to it (heat death, big crunch, big rip, etc.), is just a tiny event on this much bigger stage. All kinds of other things are happening, and the generation process is entirely random, completely \u2018luck of the draw\u2019. Given an infinity of time, anything that can happen will happen; in fact, everything that can happen already has happened! That includes much more compact universes where the efficient formation of intelligent, conscious life was the main event. (These are the ‘floating brains’, Boltzmann’s Brains).<\/p>\n

Some of these physicists postulate that such \u201cefficient consciousness universes\u201d are much more likely to happen than our Universe, as they would need less energy potential and allow higher levels of thermodynamic entropy. (This is from the second law of thermodynamics: higher levels of entropy are more likely, all else the same, than lower levels; roughly speaking, that\u2019s why cold water mixed into a bathtub of cold water causes luke-warm water, instead of cold water on one end and hot water on the other). And recent studies of the accelerating expansion of our Universe caused by infamous \u201cdark energy\u201d, and certain interpretations of super-string theory, have hinted that this \u201cbig stage where everything randomly happens sooner or later\u201d idea could be true. <\/p>\n

So, if it is true, and everything is luck of the draw, then what we think has happened with our Universe (lots of energy, lots of space, lots of time, and just a tiny bit of conscious life) is really not very likely. It could<\/u> happen; and if we\u2019re on an infinite stage, it certainly HAS happened; but there must be so many more of the smaller, more likely \u201cmini-efficient consciousness universes\u201d (i.e., the Boltzmann Brains floating out in space). And if those things so vastly outnumber the Universe we know (or think we know), then maybe we really ARE just one of those mini-efficient consciousness universes; perhaps there was a random glitch at the start which caused us to imagine<\/u> that we are living in a vast Universe with galaxies and black holes. Perhaps Bishop Berkeley<\/a> was right, except that it wasn\u2019t and isn\u2019t God who set up our \u2018illusion of reality\u2019! <\/p>\n

My half-assed attempt here to explain the Boltzmann Brain thing really only covers a small portion of it. There are all sorts of spin-offs and implications and reality checks that are part of the messy intellectual splat caused by the notion of Boltzmann\u2019s Brains in space. For a good summary of the real, hard thinking about all this, the Cosmicvariance.com<\/a> web site is a good place to go. For now, though, I want to get mushy and bring God back into the picture (but I won\u2019t get as mushy as the Creationists; I\u2019m still more of a mushy agnostic than a totally pureed-brain believer). What might be the implications of the arguments and viewpoints being bandied about in the Boltzmann Brain discussion for the question of belief versus atheism? Are there any?<\/p>\n

In my opinion there are, and they are significant (but they are not dispositive; no knock-out punches either way). The whole Boltzmann Brain idea assumes that the ultimate<\/u> generative principle is randomness and infinity (no beginning, no end, no reason for it all either). Our quantum physics gives us a hint of what randomness means. There are certainly laws and patterns and \u201cattractors\u201d in our Universe; without them, there could never have been life and consciousness, not to mention suns and planets and galaxies and black holes and such. But in the biggest picture, even these laws of physics are ultimately random; E = MC squared may apply in our Universe and in some others, but probably not in most of the others. In the \u201cmeta-verse\u201d behind all universes, the ultimate principle is a stark randomness, one that is even worse than what we see in our quantum physics (where there is still some order \u201cin the aggregate\u201d). If any laws at all apply within the bubbles of time-space that pop off from the \u201cultimate stage\u201d, it\u2019s just a luck-of-the-draw thing; what those laws are also varies by chance. We just happen to be living in the one where F = MA and E = MC squared and gravity accelerates mass by 32 feet per second squared (or we THINK we are in it). <\/p>\n

That\u2019s the scenario where there should be lots of mini-verses having self-consciousness as the main event; and where our big, sprawling, low-entropy Universe having just a smidgen of consciousness \u2013 or what we THINK we observe as our Universe \u2013 is an unlikely fluke. Randomness and temporal infinity are king. If you\u2019re interested in theology and are looking for clues and hints as to whether there is a God or not (as I am), that situation looks like a vote against God. To me, it just doesn\u2019t seem like a situation where God would be. Of course, there COULD still be a God who works in very strange ways, and of course if there is a God, humankind would never completely understand that God anyway. So the hyper-random situation is not a complete deal-breaker for the existence of God. But the smart money would surely bet against God in that case; my smart money, anyway.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the coin, there is the possibility that law and order are more ultimate than randomness. Oh, sure, randomness is still needed. It\u2019s still a yin-and-yang, chicken-and-egg thing. Without randomness, there would be no generation, no novelty, no life; everything would be fixed and still (and even if there was motion, it would be entirely ordered motion, tick-toc, ultimately meaningless). But under the \u201corder first\u201d point of view, there would be common laws that apply in every \u201cuniverse bubble\u201d that occurs. String theory hints that the laws in alternative universes and parallel realities are not the same as the ones we know; the constants (such as the rate of fall caused by gravity, or the speed of light, or having only three spacial dimensions) might vary. But still, there would be some ultimately fundamental \u201cmeta laws\u201d that would apply throughout infinity. E.g., some physicists have postulated that the process of inflation \u2018levels the playing field\u2019 between Boltzmann Brain \u201cmini-verses\u201d and the Universe that we know; under their assumptions (i.e., that inflation laws would hold for all “universe bubbles”), our Universe is NOT an unlikely fluke. <\/p>\n

So, back to the theology question \u2013 what about a creation where randomness keeps the stew bubbling, but law and order are the ultimate thing? To me, that sounds more like a place where God might be. But again, it\u2019s not a knock-out punch. Just because there is some eternal order balancing itself against randomness doesn\u2019t mean that there is GOOD order. We\u2019re still quite far from the idea of a God who somehow knows and cares about this creation and its self-conscious expressions, which are hidden away in tiny, obscure corners of certain time-space bubbles. But it seems as though ultimate order would be necessary (if not sufficient) for such a God to know and possibly interact with that consciousness. So at least God is still in the game.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don\u2019t think that we are Boltzmann Brains, nor that there are zillions and zillions of Blotzmann Brains out there (if there were so many, why wouldn\u2019t some of them find a way into our time-space and make contact with us? I\u2019ve heard of UFO\u2019s, but why should they all be so shy?). Personally, I think that there could be ultimate order in the greater multi-verse and that there could be a God transcending it all who makes use of that order to somehow promote and preserve the consciousness that develops within it. But I respect the realm of critical thinking, and I acknowledge that this could be all wrong. Nonetheless, I think that everyone is entitled to their hopes, and this just happens to be my own. Like it or lump it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week’s Science Times section of the NY Times made me aware of the \u201cBoltzmann Brain\u201d concept. My goodness, how could I have lived so long and never have heard of it? It\u2019s a huge idea, a bold idea, way out there on the bleeding edge of cosmology and mathematics, wandering off into the field […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3234,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/3234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}