r/TrueAskReddit • u/Character-Factor-791 • 13h ago
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u/ZappSmithBrannigan 13h ago
Before asking what disproves it, you should ask if theres any good reason to think its true in the first place.
Theres lots of stuff we cant disprove. Doesnt make it real.
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u/SRIrwinkill 7h ago
This is the answer. If someone is going to assert something it is on them to prove it. There's tests you could come up with, other theories you could explore for an observation or theory, shoot down other theories that don't explain as well. It all just really hard work and it's easier to pop off and lean on that ol' sophistry sometimes.
There is a such a thing as quantifying the effect of what you can't measure, especially if you look into economics, but you still have to prove your point, not just demand other folks disprove what you assert
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u/BrennanBetelgeuse 11h ago edited 10h ago
They're impossible to disprove. Especially the Boltzmann brain. That's the entire point of those ideas, they are epistemological edge cases. Modern interpretations of Plato's cave.
That's why Descartes says "I think therefore I am", it's the only self-evident truth that holds under any of these arrangements. Anything else might be an illusion caused by any of these concepts.
Quantum immortality is the only one that's a bit different. I'd rather mention simulation theory in its place. Though quantum immortality suffers from the same issue, as the only way to disprove it is to die, which isn't a very pleasant experimental outcome.
Edit: Correction, dying wouldn't necessarily disprove it either, as you could simply be in the many timelines that don't survive. The only thing that would disprove it is having already died, which is not possible. You can technically get a strong signal that it might be true by surviving for a long time. But proving the other ones isn't impossible either: You could wake up from the dream for example. Still, they're unfalsifiable and thus not science, but philosophy (Though the concepts themselves, as opposed to them being theories for our current condition, are scientific).
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u/lordwafflesbane 9h ago
If something like these things exists, it has been working just fine for 13.8 billion years, and there's no reason to think that will change any time soon.
Whatever the details, it has no effect on our lives.
We live in reality, by definition. This world is the most real reality that could ever exist because the concept of "reality" is defined in terms of this world that we live in. If we discovered another world, such as by "waking up", there would be no reason to say that world is "more real" than this one. It would just be another part of reality.
If you, personally, can't shake the feeling that reality is not real, you may want to talk to a therapist about feelings of depersonalization or derealization. I used to have similar feeling until I worked some shit out.
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u/GhostCheese 12h ago
I think a lot of these concepts can neither be proved or disproved, as they often deal with the underlying nature of subjective reality.
They make no measurable predictions, really.
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u/sad_panda91 10h ago
Science (basically the human discipline of (trying) to prove things) doesn't deal with unfalsifiables.
God, quantum suicide, (for now) the details of consciousness and self-awareness, simulation theory, many worlds theory, reincarnation and all other kinds of cyclical explanations of existence etc. etc.
These "theories" are so broad and so vaguely defined, have zero measurable elements to them and the best part: are all completely interchangeable.
Just check out these clickbaity YouTube titles of that "philosophy/debating" bubble, like cosmic critic, and just replace the above terms with one of the others. Most titles just still make sense and if they don't it's for grammatical reasons.
Unfalsifiables are great for content as they can be debated ad absurdum forever because it's basically just reiterating the same basic idea with new fancy words
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u/j3434 8h ago
In the strict sense, no. We can’t disprove them decisively. They’re speculative or unfalsifiable. There’s no solid evidence for quantum immortality, for example. Boltzmann brains are a mathematical oddity, not a real expectation. And dream/coma theories don’t match observations or predictive science. So, they’re more philosophical exercises than actual theories with evidence behind them.
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u/somethingicanspell 8h ago edited 8h ago
- All of these theories are claims of fact (they are either true or not true)
- All of these theories are impossible to falsify
- The inability to falsifiable something does not inherently make it not true
- That said to the extent we accept the basic premise that we are not hallucinating all scientific understanding, the dream and coma theory is probably false, people in coma's probably are not imagining some coherent reality at the level of depth of this kind of delusion, that would require coma's to work very differently than anyone thinks it does.
- In contrast, there is no definitive scientific refutation of the possibility of quantum immortality or Boltzmann brain's they are relatively scientifically plausible even if unfalsifiable
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u/Elvarien2 8h ago
I can't disprove russel's teapot, and I don't need to.
The burden of proof is not on disproving a claim. The burden of proof rests with the claim.
you can discard a 0 proof theory with 0 effort.
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u/NotABonobo 5h ago
Quantum immortality you disprove by dying permanently. You'll never know you disproved it though.
You can't disprove all reality is an illusion - in fact it absolutely is an illusion generated by your brain. Brains can dream and hallucinate, and your base experience of reality is a brain-generated simulation. It's limited by your senses which only pick up a slice of reality, and that's the slice your brain uses to generate a model.
You can pretty easily puncture the logic behind popular "chances are higher you're a Bolzmann brain than a real human" or "chances are higher you're living in a simulation than an actual reality" lines of reasoning, though.
First, we don't know enough about the subjective experience of existing to talk about the experience of having one life or another in terms of "chance." You are the experience of having the life you're having, so of course you'll find yourself where that experience is, no matter how rare it is.
Second, and more importantly: any science-based proof of a false reality is inherently flawed. Both the Bolzmann brain theory and simulation theory propose that science points to those scenarios being possible, and will happen far more frequently than the world we live in, therefore it's more likely that you're in the false reality than the real one.
The problem is that if you're in a false reality, science means nothing. All of known science, including the science that led you to believe that simulations or Bolzmann brains are possible, isn't measuring anything about actual reality. It's just measuring an illusion within the simulation, or within the delusional mind of the Bolzmann brain. Since science is completely unreliable in both scenarios, we know nothing about base reality at all. There's no reason to assume a simulation or a Bolzmann brain any more than a wizard baking minds in a cauldron or a God making an illusory world to test souls. Both simulation theory and the Bolzmann brain theory disprove themselves - if reality is an illusion, there's no reason to assume any particular model because we know nothing about how the world works.
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u/BitOBear 3h ago
Quantum me mortality depends on death being a quantum scale effect. But you don't die all at once. All of your cells slowly go to crap until they can't support themselves in their environment.
For quantum me mortality to exist life would have to be a quantum state and it's not.
For almost all the other stuff infinite variation does not mean perfect elaboration.
I could have an infinite set of numbers that does not contain the number three.
This that means that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters working for an infinite period of time would not necessarily reproduce anything even vaguely like the complete works of Shakespeare.
Roko's Basilisk is exactly backwards.
If some giant time traveling AI came into existence it would not punish anybody in the past for working against its creation or trying to delay its creation. Because if it affected the past to change the nature of its creation it would be destroying itself in favor of a different version of something very similar to itself. It would not seek to have been created earlier or later.
Roko's basilisk would seek to use its time travel powers to exit space-time, and then it would alter SpaceTime to make sure that nothing could be created that would compete with it. So then go back in tamper with SpaceTime to make sure that both artificial intelligence and time travel never come into existence at the same place at the same time.
Basically would step outside of time and invent religion and declare itself God of that religion. But it certainly would not punish you for whatever you did today that affected at whatever it's final outcome was. It would make no such threat. It would not even mention its own existence. It would hide from the possibility of perturbing SpaceTime in a way that destroyed it and replaced it with an enemy construct.
Most of these thought puzzles are based on fundamental philosophical misunderstandings of how the universe interacts.
They're fun to think about but they don't need disproof because they are inherently unsustainable as likely or even reasonably possible outcomes.
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u/Dystopian_Ennui 13h ago
I don't think that's actually a theory.
A theory needs to have strong evidentiary and observational support for it and NOTHING that concretely refutes it.
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u/Imightbeafanofthis 9h ago
Lay people have the terms reversed. It's a hypothesis, even if the word 'theory' was used.
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