Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?

I'am amazed to read this.It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

Taken from:

Big Brain Theory

Amazing theory...I must say.

Amazing read, but to deep. My brain that is floating in space is now hurting....

reply to post by AryanWatch


See this discussion by Sean Carrol.

reply to post by AryanWatch


What I find worrisome is the fact that the NYT considers this potentially "embarrassing"... That single adjective speaks volumes.
(About the NYT and the mainstream culture, that is.)

reply to post by disownedsky



That's fascinating, DisownedSky.
Have you posted about this independently?

It seems as though the mechanical scientists are always a step behind the Spiritual Scientists, I wonder why that is.

reply to post by menguard


EXACTLY.
And the NYT seems to be not only acknowledging, but implicitly condoning that backwardness.)

reply to post by menguard


Because spiritualists always believe they are a step ahead of everyone else?

And thanks for that link to the article at cosmic variance, that's a good primer for reading the NYT piece.

I remember doing the "expected time until all the air ends up in that half of the classroom" calculation in a physics class and in a chemistry class. Wish those two departments could have stopped fighting over statistical mechanics versus thermodynamics and just gotten along I would have had less homework that way.

Originally posted by AryanWatch
I'am amazed to read this.It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

Taken from:

Big Brain Theory

Amazing theory...I must say.

A fascinating possibility.

There are other weird possibilities I've been running as thought experiments. Consider this one:

Consider for a moment, as a given, that we exist in a multiverse, with infinite possible combinations of events existing in parallel to one another. There are an infinite number of copies of you, one per universe, in which different things happen, with varying degrees of probability.

In a multiverse setting, I can given you the probability that there is a version of you that accidentally believes you are a god, because everything you want, accidentally, and with very low probability, always happens to turn out just as you want it. You want a spoon off of a counter and **poof**, with incredibly crazy low probability, air atoms converge to lift the spoon up and bring it to your hand. Then you want it to rain, and **poof** magically, it does, and so on. Infinite improbability? Not quite. Its ridiculously unlikely, but a finite probability, none the less.

Does that version of the universe exist within the multiverse? Likely. Would it conform to entropy enough to be statistically mechanical? No way! The momentary existence of Boltzman's brain is more likely. Everyone around you would have one set of lawys for everything, and another for you. Frighteningly, there could be an awfully spoiled version of each of out there in an freakishly improbable universe far more weird than the one we are in.

Is the universe itself, as a whole, such an entity, the creation of which cannot conform to the laws it then applies?

[edit on 16-1-2008 by Ectoterrestrial]

Well i think its great. I love all the mathematical theoretical physics stuff like string theory and 11 or is it 10 dimensions?

I just think its amazing that we are even having this debate in the first place. Its the first observations of an entirely new and vast array of scientific laws quite possibly.

Thanks to knowledge of the atom and its components people are already thinking of building quantum computers, matter replicators, matter transporters (like in star trek), time travelling etc.

Its all about that Large Hadron Collider and the research we'll be able to fulfill in this area of partical phyiscs thats really going to shed light on the strange universe we live in. If it doesn't create and suck us all into a black hole

reply to post by Ectoterrestrial


I'm following your example quite well. Its is thought though in a lot of circles multiverses would only differ by just 1 quantum event. Like a ray of sunlight. So every possible quantum event that can happen does happen in a probably infinite number of universes.

there is a version of you that accidentally believes you are a god

I already am that version... so, what do I do next? ; )

I certainly prefer the idea of a multiverse with certain possibilities/potentialities actualised... although, sadly, I happen to believe that Hugh Everett's idea has been grossly misinterpreted, mostly by popular science writers and, of course, the media. (And I am not sure that, in his own mind, this idea ever transcended the level of purely mathematical speculation.)

But, to me, anything is more appealing than the idea of reincarnation... unless I can be reborn as myself, of course. (And to me, that is a perfectly plausible thought, BTW.)

I've already beaten incredible odds by having been born the "I" that I am - what chance is there for me to be even luckier the next time?

By the way, this is (still) mostly in response to the article itself, not to any of the replies here.



[edit on 16-1-2008 by Vanitas]

Originally posted by Vanitas
reply to post by AryanWatch

 

What I find worrisome is the fact that the NYT considers this potentially "embarrassing"... That single adjective speaks volumes.
(About the NYT and the mainstream culture, that is.)

Yeah -- I was a bit thrown by that remark about this being "emabarrassing" also. What's so embarrassing? Assuming for a moment that the "infinite number of universes" theory theory then there are an infinite amount of possible charactersistics for universes to have.

It's similar to the "infinite monkey" theory. The theory goes that a monkey given an infinite amount of time to randomly type at a typewriter, he will eventually almost surely string together enough random letters to write the entire works of Shakespeare.

p.s...by the way, other versions of this theory say "an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters...", but the way I see it, all one needs is a single monkey and an infinite amount of time. Right?

reply to post by Vanitas


I agree that people have taken Hugh's idea of the multiverse and run with it. I've certainly run with it to the extreme with my thought experiment, in which the multiverse consists of the inifinite collection of all possible things, at all scales.

I once attended a talk in which a physicist speculated that thermodynamics acts like a giant 'shake down', reducing the multi-universe quantum mechanical world to a single, consistent reality at our scale. If he is right, my thought experiment is meaningless, and further, Schroedinger's cat is dead as a doornail, or alive as can be, in a single consistent universe.

As for this "You are more likely to be a delusional temporary brain in a convergence somewhere in a field" idea: I just want you all to know that you have been very, very entertaining delusions while you lasted

[edit on 16-1-2008 by Ectoterrestrial]

reply to post by Ectoterrestrial


Well... if you actually can envisage it, it sounds like a perfectly plausible theory. I do happen to believe that if you can think of it, it is "real" (at least potentially).
What's more, it would be possible - and relatively easy - to back it even from a philosophical and/or theological viewpoint - and that's no small feat. ; )

Myself, I envisage the "parallel" time/space lines (hypothetical or not) as potentialities. But I am sure there is a mathematical catch somewhere in there that would prove me "wrong"... ; ) Sometimes, I am glad that math really isn't my thing.

Anyway... fascinating stuff.

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
but the way I see it, all one needs is a single monkey and an infinite amount of time. Right?

Kind of But with infinate time, you wouldn't need the monkey nor the typewriter, or even the paper for that matter. Everything would happen.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People



Actually, an infinite number of monkeys would be infinitely faster than one monkey with an infinite amount of time,....

cool idea and well worth a mention.

however. This article is to show that anything is possible due to the many variables in the calculations between time and space. that means that what we consider is real in this life at this time, actually is real. meaning we did just evolve and what i remember from my youth really did happen in my youth.

Originally posted by benign.psychosis

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
but the way I see it, all one needs is a single monkey and an infinite amount of time. Right?

Kind of

But with infinate time, you wouldn't need the monkey nor the typewriter, or even the paper for that matter. Everything would happen.

Doesn't this also imply that there is an unendless list of things that happen in infinite number of ways ?

reply to post by Ectoterrestrial


Here is what Einstein had to say about this. "God doesn't play dice"