Occam's Razor, Boltzmann's Brain, and Wigner's Friend

Abstract: Modern cosmology has revived interest in some early 20th century puzzles that had seemed to be more in the realm of unanswerable philosophy than science: the Boltzmann’s brain problem of whether we might be merely a rare statistical fluctuation in an old dead universe, rather than inhabitants of a thriving young one, and the Wigner’s friend problem, of what it feels like to be inside an unobserved quantum superposition.

Hosted by Chris Jarzynski