If you believe that our existence is a result of a mere fluctuation of low entropy, then you should not believe that the stars are real. Why? Because the frequency with which a particular fluctuation appears decreases exponentially with the size of the fluctuation. (Basically because entropy is S=log W, where W is the number of micro states.) A fluctuation that creates both the Earth and the stars is far less likely than a fluctuation that just creates the Earth, and some photons heading towards the Earth that just happen to look like they came from stars. Even though it is unbelievably unlikely that the photons would happen to arrange themselves into that exact configuration, it’s even more unbelievably unlikely that of all the fluctuations, we’d happen to live in one so large that it included stars. Of course, this view also implies a prediction about starlight: Since the starlight is just thermal noise, the most likely scenario is that it will stop looking like it came from stars, and start looking just like (very cold) blackbody radiation. So the most likely prediction, under the entropy fluctuation view, is that this very instant the sun and all the stars will go out.
That’s a fairly absurd prediction, of course. The general consensus among people who’ve thought about this stuff is that our low entropy world cannot have been the sole result of a fluctuation, precisely because it would lead to absurd predictions. Perhaps a fluctuation triggered some kind of runaway process that produced a lot of low-entropy bits, or perhaps it was something else entirely, but at some point in the process, there needs to be a way of producing low entropy bits that doesn’t become half as likely to happen for each additional bit produced.
Interestingly, as long as the new low entropy bits don’t overwrite existing high entropy bits, it’s not against the laws of thermodynamics for new low entropy bits to be produced. It’s kind of a reversible computing version of malloc: you’re allowed to call malloc and free as much as you like in reversible computing, as long as the bits in question are in a known state. So for example, you can call a version of malloc that always produces bits initialized to 0. And you can likewise free a chunk of bits, so long as you set them all to 0 first. If the laws of physics allow for an analogous physical process, then that could explain why we seem to live in a low entropy region of spacetime. Something must have “called malloc” early on, and produced the treasure trove of low entropy bits that we see around us. (It seems like in our universe, information content is limited by surface area. So a process that increased the information storage capacity of our universe would have to increase its surface area somehow. This points suggestively at the expansion of space and the cosmological constant, but we mostly still have no idea what’s going on. And the surface area relation may break down once things get as large as the whole universe anyway.)
The prediction that the sun and stars we perceive will go out is absurd only because you are excluding the possibility that you are dreaming. Because of what we label as dreams we frequently perceive things that quickly pop out of existence.
If you believe that our existence is a result of a mere fluctuation of low entropy, then you should not believe that the stars are real. Why? Because the frequency with which a particular fluctuation appears decreases exponentially with the size of the fluctuation. (Basically because entropy is S=log W, where W is the number of micro states.) A fluctuation that creates both the Earth and the stars is far less likely than a fluctuation that just creates the Earth, and some photons heading towards the Earth that just happen to look like they came from stars. Even though it is unbelievably unlikely that the photons would happen to arrange themselves into that exact configuration, it’s even more unbelievably unlikely that of all the fluctuations, we’d happen to live in one so large that it included stars. Of course, this view also implies a prediction about starlight: Since the starlight is just thermal noise, the most likely scenario is that it will stop looking like it came from stars, and start looking just like (very cold) blackbody radiation. So the most likely prediction, under the entropy fluctuation view, is that this very instant the sun and all the stars will go out.
That’s a fairly absurd prediction, of course. The general consensus among people who’ve thought about this stuff is that our low entropy world cannot have been the sole result of a fluctuation, precisely because it would lead to absurd predictions. Perhaps a fluctuation triggered some kind of runaway process that produced a lot of low-entropy bits, or perhaps it was something else entirely, but at some point in the process, there needs to be a way of producing low entropy bits that doesn’t become half as likely to happen for each additional bit produced.
Interestingly, as long as the new low entropy bits don’t overwrite existing high entropy bits, it’s not against the laws of thermodynamics for new low entropy bits to be produced. It’s kind of a reversible computing version of malloc: you’re allowed to call malloc and free as much as you like in reversible computing, as long as the bits in question are in a known state. So for example, you can call a version of malloc that always produces bits initialized to 0. And you can likewise free a chunk of bits, so long as you set them all to 0 first. If the laws of physics allow for an analogous physical process, then that could explain why we seem to live in a low entropy region of spacetime. Something must have “called malloc” early on, and produced the treasure trove of low entropy bits that we see around us. (It seems like in our universe, information content is limited by surface area. So a process that increased the information storage capacity of our universe would have to increase its surface area somehow. This points suggestively at the expansion of space and the cosmological constant, but we mostly still have no idea what’s going on. And the surface area relation may break down once things get as large as the whole universe anyway.)
The prediction that the sun and stars we perceive will go out is absurd only because you are excluding the possibility that you are dreaming. Because of what we label as dreams we frequently perceive things that quickly pop out of existence.