Adam Elga

They have no reason to think that anyone has ever looked through a telescope or that any human being has ever existed.

They're just random blobs.

It's the equivalent of finding out that the encyclopedia you have been basing all of your life upon was typed by monkeys.

Now,

What do they think now?

They think, okay, so I'm not a Boltzmann brain.

All that stuff is wrong.

But so then I'm fine.

I'm just a human.

But then the original argument comes back.

It seems like there's something weird going on, some kind of instability.

And the question is, what exactly do we make of that?

And does it lead to a way out of

the Boltzmann brain puzzle.

Let me stop there and see how that sits with you so far.

Exactly.

And indeed, the majority of them, the lion's share of them, as you have pointed out, are in a sad state indeed, because they are in the state of the entropically cheapest way to get an experience or evidential state that matches yours.

And presumably, that's a very strange, transient, coming together for just the minimum amount of time it takes to have this experience that you're having right now, and then immediately decay into blah.

It's a sad short life.

I think someone could posit that, but I don't think it is as strongly motivated by the instability phenomenon as one might have hoped.