Boltzmann brain

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The Boltzmann brain thought experiment suggests that it is more probable for a brain to spontaneously form, complete with a memory of having existed in our universe, than for the entire universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it did. Physicists use the Boltzmann brain thought experiment as a reductio ad absurdum argument for evaluating competing scientific theories. In contrast to brain in a vat thought experiments, which are about perception and thought, Boltzmann brains are used in cosmology to test our assumptions about thermodynamics and the development of the universe. Over a sufficiently long time, random fluctuations could cause particles to spontaneously form literally any structure of any degree of complexity, including a functioning human brain. The scenario initially involved only a single brain with false memories; however, physicist Sean M. Carroll pointed out that, in a fluctuating universe, the scenario works just as well at larger scales, like that of entire...

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