Big brains, small brains, no brains. . . it's your call!

“People are not prepared for this discussion,” Dr. Linde said.

Now THAT I can agree with . . . but everything else in this fascinating article in today's New York Times leaves my head spinning. I don't know if it's proof that we don't have a clue, or if it's the modern day equivalent of the old debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's not garbage. I say that simply because it takes a certain amount of intelligence to create, write about, and follow the arguments and beings who can do this I take seriously. Besides, i take Einstein seriously and at one point he comforted the widow of a friend with words to the effect that "we physicists know it's all an illusion. "

So I urge you to read and try to stay with this one. The sidebar in a separate window makes an excellent and comprehensible review.

A few choice quotes - first, reincarnation:

“It is part of a much bigger set of questions about how to think about probabilities in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur, does occur, infinitely many times,” said Leonard Susskind of Stanford, a co-author of a paper in 2002 that helped set off the debate. Or as Andrei Linde, another Stanford theorist given to colorful language, loosely characterized the possibility of a replica of your own brain forming out in space sometime, “How do you compute the probability to be reincarnated to the probability of being born?”

A summary of the second law of thermodynamics . . .

“things get worse”

and probability on the cheap . . .

But it’s more likely, he went on, that you will be reincarnated as an isolated brain, without the baggage of stars and galaxies. In terms of probability, he said, “It’s cheaper.”

and rushing back to reality, maybe . . .

In an e-mail response to Dr. Hartle’s view, Don Page of the University of Alberta, who has been a prominent voice in the Boltzmann debate, argued that what counted cosmologically was not sheer numbers, but consciousness, which we have in abundance over the insects. “I would say that we have no strong evidence against the working hypothesis that we are typical and that our observations are typical,” he explained, “which is very fruitful in science for helping us believe that our observations are not just flukes but do tell us something about the universe.”

So, are you prepared for this discussion? You're forgiven if you think it's just BS. I don't. I take the discussion seriously - or the fact that such a discussion is going on I take seriously. I don't believe in the supernatural. I do believe that we have a lot yet to learn about the natural and if nothing else this article does a good job of documenting how we are currently floundering about on the ragged edges of physics, astronomy, and cosmology. What do you think? Send me an email at gstone@umassd.edu. I will post here what you write, unless you instruct me not to.

Don writes:

...“infinitely unlikely for us to be normal brains.”

Reflect for a moment on top management. I see Dilbert's pointy-haired boss.....

DSD comments;

Yeah, I felt the same way as I read it. Then I remembered how much background text is latent in these articles by science writers and how what they write is at best an approximation of what they are describing and I loosened up a bit. It's an experience trying to deal with one author's take on quantum mechanics and getting hung up in one or another thought and then finding that in reading another author I have discovered the resolution of my hang-up. It's not an answer that the second author provides but more of opening up a relationship or a train of thought that takes me back with a micro-ahha phenomenon. But this is one essay that I think I'll keep since it is rich in opinions about possibilities.

There are a couple books about string theory and how, after a few decades of trying, there is little testable evidence for it. So I'm skeptical about predictions based on it. It's nothing like quantum theory for which every prediction based upon it has turned out to be true.

And Pete says:

Dr. Linde is right. Maybe. Either I'm not prepared for this discussion, or these guys have been sniffing glue.....

My response:

I gotta admit - until I read this I thought I wandered out on the edges some times. Heck, I didn't even know where the edges were ;-)

Mike came up with a good link on Boltzman's brain and is thinking along lines similar to my own - among other things, I need to reread this article - several times . . .

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the great info and article - it's way out of my grasp, but it is
certainly interesting to think about it. Wow!! I'll have to read it a few
dozen more times when I have time. I needed another explanation on
Boltzmann Brains, and Wikipedia had a good one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

I've thought about some things like this before, sort of along the same
tangent, such as our own consciousness and observations. We can only be
(maybe?) certain about our own consciousness and observations, as it is all
we really (maybe?) know.

And, in terms of the universe's chaos and order - how many pot holes have
you hit with your car in your life? In terms of probability, has hitting
one ever properly aligned your car's front end? I try to think of that in
terms of the development of life. And when it occurred here on Earth, that
first single celled life form had to immediately begin consuming its
environment to survive, and develop the ability to replicate before it
expired. It's mind blowing that this could occur, even with a single
celled organism. But yet here I am....trillions of ordered cells working
together to type this message to you, billions of years after the fact.

And, could other single celled life have formed numerous times, but died
off because it could not develop the ability to split or replicate in time?
Or did it happen correctly the first time out of the gate (the pot hole
analogy)?

So many questions, and so few answers. Ok...now I'm going back to the easy
stuff of fixing computers....

Hope all's well - have a good night!