this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
756 points (97.2% liked)

Science Memes

19355 readers
1835 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] bunchberry@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It seems more likely in a universe that is infinitely large that brains would come into existence through simpler deterministic processes like they did on earth than random fluctuations no?

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Our best ideas on the big bang put the universe as huge, but finite in space. (Way bigger than the observable universe) The question is time. If time is infinite then Boltzmann brains win.

Matter has a finite life, energy differentials run out. Stars run out of fuel. Black holes evaporate. Even protons eventually fall apart to energy. Then there is endless emptiness.

That emptiness would be finite in space, but infinite in time. Without that last boundary, weird things happen to maths.

[–] bunchberry@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

If you appeal to heat death then you cannot say brains pop back into existence either because "matter has a finite life," and so it is self-defeating. If brains can pop back into existence due to random fluctuations then surely planets and stars could as well given enough time.