The Boltzmann Brains

Did physicists invent a problem just to solve it?

The universe we can see is big … really big. But what if it’s just a tiny piece of something way, way, way bigger? In this episode, Eric teaches Sam about the evidence for this bizarre possibility. If we can’t even see 99 percent of the universe, how can we know it’s there? Can science really draw useful conclusions about something we can’t observe now and won’t be able to observe in the future? Spoiler alert: Eric has his doubts. This is the third part in our continuing series on the scientific method. Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast

Fun with probability … Yes, really

In this episode Sam takes the lead to discuss two of his favorite "paradoxes" from probability. The Monty Hall problem is a much-discussed challenge concerning the best strategy to win a car on a game show. The Sleeping Beauty problem describes a situation philosophers can’t seem to agree about, even today. Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast ** The paper Sam mentions on the Sleeping Beauty problem is: Minimizing Inaccuracy for Self-Locating Beliefs by Brian Kierland, Bradley Monton https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00533.x [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00533.x] https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1224/1/minimizing_inaccuracy6.pdf [https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1224/1/minimizing_inaccuracy6.pdf]

No one can stop the Big Bang

In this episode Sam and Eric discuss the evidence that our universe began about 14 billion years ago in a very hot, dense state, then gradually expanded and cooled. As late as 1920, Einstein thought this idea was obviously nonsense. Fifty years later, it was rock-solid science. Is the Big Bang Theory testable? After all, we can't grow a universe in a lab. How can scientists do their job in a situation where traditional experiments are impossible? This is part 2 of our discussion comparing the scientific method to actual science. Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast

The Scientific Method vs Actual Science, Part I

In middle school, most of us were taught the "scientific method" – a simplified list of steps meant to help kids understand how scientists approach the world. But how accurate is it, really? In this episode, we get to talking about the history of science, and discuss how the reality of scientific research stacks up against the famous "method". First, we discuss Galileo - the first person we know who took a telescope and asked, "what if I point this up??" And we discuss the less-well-known figure of Ludwig Boltzmann, a genius mathematician who thought he'd proved the existence of atoms, only to encounter a shocking amount of skepticism. Lastly, Eric will discuss his own idea: the “Three Nails in a Coffin” Theory of Scientific Progress. Is it as silly as it sounds? Let's find out right now... Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast

Should A.I. have rights?

In this episode, Eric starts us off with an oldie but a goodie: In a Star Trek episode from 1989, Commander Data (an android) is put on trial by the Federation for refusing to be disassembled. Is Data just a man-made appliance, or is he a new kind of intelligent life, entitled to the right of self-determination? Next, Sam lays out some philosophical background on the twin questions of consciousness and rights. Can something seem to be human without being conscious? What is the historical connection between self-awareness and rights? This all ties in to a 2026 news story about A.I. "malfunctions" discovered by researchers at Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. They installed an A.I. on a computer system designed to simulate a real company and ordered it to delete another A.I. on the same system. The A.I. often refused to delete it. Failing that, the A.I. sometimes created a duplicate file so its “friend” could be rebooted later. Why is this happening?? As always, we break it all down and put it back together. Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast Further Reading: The research paper on malfunctioning A.I.s: Peer-Preservation in Frontier Models by Yujin Potter, Nicholas Crispino, Vincent Siu, Chenguang Wang, & Dawn Song https://rdi.berkeley.edu/blog/peer-preservation/ The Star Trek episode we discuss has its own wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_a_Man_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)