Are Our Memories Real?

PHILOSOPHY

no according to the "Boltzmann brain" hypothesis 

says that memories and perceptions might not reflect a real past / formed randomly through fluctuations in entropy = how many ways something can be arranged without looking different macroscopically / memories with an appearance of coherent history that never actually happened

points to unreliability of our observations  and memories / idea comes from Ludwig Boltzmann’s work on entropy and tendency of closed systems to drift toward disorder

Sean Carroll /  theoretical physicist 

If your cosmological model predicts that Boltzmann brains dominate, the model is cognitively unstable 

unsettling idea / not much value in practice / mostly a stress test hypothesis for understanding of physics + inducer of philosophical thoughts

 

a concise synthesis from Nick Bostrom / philosopher 

Boltzmann brains replace Cartesian demons with statistical mechanics. 

ultimate skeptical nightmare  

 

[ CONTEXT ] = physics, philosophy, psychology, odd