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Brains, minus the vat
...across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.
Here is more, the piece also contains a serious scientific discussion of the possibility of reincarnation.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 14, 2008 at 09:41 PM in Science | Permalink
Comments
I've heard about the theory that the universe may re-occur in an endless cycle of big bangs. Also, if the conditions during the big bang are exactly the same each time that the universe and everything in it including us may be the same each time. I think if I am going to be re-living this life for eternity I better enjoy it. Then I think of all the people who have had horrible lives and I wonder are they doomed to repeat them over and over.
Posted by: Elroy at Jan 14, 2008 10:34:27 PM
Check that: simulations of brains floating vatless are even more likely.
Posted by: Eric Crampton at Jan 14, 2008 10:34:32 PM
Aaarg. Never trust the NYT to explain anything scientific correctly. Doubly so for the grand philosophy type questions.
The basic ideas, that the Times fails to explain clearly, are along the lines of:
1. If created universes are uniform
2. Universes will have local regions of interesting stuff (essentially statistic anomalies like rolling a 6 ten times in a roll.)
3. We are statistical anomalies - we think we are observing and thinking.
4. A small anomaly (e.g. 10^23 molecules think they went to school in Wisconsin and now are living with their wife in Manhattan) is far more likely than a big anomaly (e.g. there is a Wisconsin and a Manhattan.)
It's essentially the anthropomorphic argument viewed sideways. Points 1, 3, and 4 are all open to debate. Toss in some infinites and epsilon probabilites, add beer, and you have a great college experience.
But, as Eric says, simulation is *far* more likely. Espcially because we seem to be living in an efficiently computable universe rather than simple rule-driven one.
Posted by: gorobei at Jan 14, 2008 11:12:41 PM
Yeah, an *actual* brain floating in space seems pretty dang unlikely. It's a lot easier for evolution to make a brain from largely random starting conditions than for atoms to happen to occur together in the regular configurations of a brain.
Posted by: Braden at Jan 14, 2008 11:59:16 PM
Herbert West has a very good head on his shoulders... and another one in a dish floating in outer space
Posted by: at Jan 15, 2008 2:52:20 AM
I think braden nails the problem: our universe appears to make a lot of sense, and we have a reasonably good idea how enitities such as Wisconsin, Manhattan and ourselves could come into existence out of simpler stuff. On the other hand, we have no idea at all how a brain in space could come in to existence except through incredibly small odds. I don't really see an argument in the NYT piece why 'freak observers' are more likely than 'ordered observers'
Simulation would require some sort of simulator, or it would be indistiguishable from 'reality as we know it'.
Exactly how a simlator containing Wisconsin and us is more likely to exist than, well, Wisconsin and us is cnot clear to me.
Posted by: GreatZamfir at Jan 15, 2008 5:26:28 AM
Yeah, I read about the folks who say that, because in a couple decades it will be easy to create simulations that perfectly mimic life (as in, World of Warcraft will become more like The Matrix as computing power improves), and since it is likely with the expansion of computing power there will be many times more life simulations than there have been actual lives, and because this span of two decades or so until this is possible is an extremely small fraction of total history, it is highly probable that your life is really just a computer simulation.
I get it. But it just doesn't seem right, does it. The statistical assumptions remind me of that old phrase about statistics and statisticians.
Posted by: Andrew at Jan 15, 2008 6:22:41 AM
That argument can be recast, because there are six billion people on earth, the odds are vanishingly small that you are in fact the one you think you are. It contains the tacit assumption that you have no reliable prior information about your identity.
Posted by: Cyrus at Jan 15, 2008 7:40:52 AM
I'm no Bayesian (through ignorance, not rejection), but does the possibility of computer simulation render Pascal's wager, well, viable?
Posted by: burger flipper at Jan 15, 2008 7:42:25 AM
What phrase about statisticians> There must be millions...
About the simulations, I think many people grossly underestimate how complicated reality is, and they overestimate to what extend computer games are simulations.
Basically, almost everything in games that feels real is a sort of scripted event. If you wlk into water, your rate of movement is decreased and you hear a splashing sound. But that's only because the game makers expected you to go into the water, and made a script to describe what happens.
But I doubt you can produce a Matrix-quality simulation based on scripts. There are just too many things you can do in real life, in so many different ways, there is no way you script them all. What if walk in the water backwards? Does it sound different? What if I put my hand in the water while walking? If I make a handstand? Breathe out while making a handstand underwater?
Reality provides coherent results for all these actions, but WoW only feels real because you can't do them, and therefore don't notice the missing scripts. I think the only way to make a simulation that really feels real is to provide very basic rules, 'laws', that can be used to evaluate every permittable action, even unexpected ones.
In present games, the only vaguely physical laws are the 'your viewpoint is a constant distance from the floor' rule and the 'you can't walk through walls' rule, plus of course lots of 3-D perspective rules to describe what any object will look like from any viewpoint. It is no coincidence that actions related to these rules feel the most realistic. Movement in the horizontal plane feels 'free', unrestricted, because no matter what move you make, the game provides realistic feedback. But the moment you start climbing, the game switches to scipts, and it feel s lot less free and real.
Same for visuals: everything related to perspective is near perfect, but the effects related to texture and lighting a done by sleight-of-hand, and never feel photorealistic.
The point here is that the movement and perspective rules are very simple. In the next decade we might see realistic rigid-body physics and ray-tracing visuals, but even those are from a physical point of view almost trivial. Fluid dynamics isn't going to give us a 'universal aerodynamics simulation tool' for many decades, and that's assuming current exponential improvements in hardware and algorithms will continue. Now imagine chemistry. Any Matrix-quality simulation would require simulation of burning houses and clotting blood, based on basic physical rules about chemistry. I think we can wait a long, long time on that.
Posted by: Great Zamfir at Jan 15, 2008 7:55:43 AM
I would say it's even more likely that we're simulations run by a floating brain. Or floating brains in a simulation?
Posted by: Greg at Jan 15, 2008 10:02:15 AM
Okay, now we know about the brain without the VAT. Now, what about the Fair Tax Without Brains?
Posted by: Colin Fraizer at Jan 15, 2008 11:06:22 AM
Scientists verging into theology would do well to consider the ground already covered by theologians. Otherwise, like the naked brains, they will be thinking things that have already been thought.
Posted by: 8 at Jan 15, 2008 1:55:17 PM
