Reddit reply in r/PhilosophyMemes: move over solipsism new fear unlocked — December 3, 2025 | Ali Shukri Amin

I am going to elaborate even further.

Given that we already observe something insanely special (the equivalent of your 100,000 sixes in a row) which kind of process is more likely to have produced that observation, within a purely naturalistic framework?

Under unguided naturalism, there isn’t just one allowed process (“Big Bang → low entropy universe → billions of years of evolution”). There are also:

1. processes where a minimal low-entropy fluctuation produces a single brain with my current memories (Boltzmann brain)
2. processes where a much smaller region of space fluctuates into a fake environment around that brain, etc.

These are all, in principle, stochastic physical processes. The point of the Boltzmann-brain argument is that the simpler, lower-entropy processes are more PROBABLE. It is “cheaper” (in entropy terms) to produce an entropic microstate consisting of one brain with fake memories than to produce an entire low-entropy universe that really evolved that brain.

The question I am asking is about statistics & probability more than scientific processes. All we need to understand for the purposes of this conversation is that our observed history is incredibly unlikely to occur from stochastic processes and that statistics indicates that less complex/rare/particular scenarios that deviate less from a default stare are more probable.

Therefore: is it even conceivably possible for some simpler stochastic process to generate a conscious observer with my experiences than “whole universe + full evolutionary history”?

If you say no, you’re smuggling in a non-naturalistic constraint that privileges our particular history. I firmly believe this is what you & most naturalists do in a knee jerk fashion.

If you say yes, then you have the Boltzmann-brain problem: conditional on our observations, we should take seriously the possibility that we’re in one of those cheaper processes rather than the full evolutionary story.