However, you’ve no evidence that you’re not a Boltzmann brain. You choose to accept on faith that you are not and, desiring to be consistent and even-handed, you further choose to accept on faith that the entire visible universe is just as complex as it seems to be (which would likely be false if e.g. we’re in a simulation).
You point out that adopting such priors requires biting an unpleasant bullet. This is not a reason for someone not to adopt it and indeed bite the bullet. The real reason is purely psychological: people don’t want to accept a Boltzmann prior, they’re not built that way.
Of course I write this from the POV of someone who does not accept the Boltzmann prior. From the POV of someone who does, time itself does not properly exist—or at least they always expect to cease coherently thinking in the few seconds with overwhelming probability—so an explanation based on psychology is problematic since psychology takes time to happen in a brain...
See also: Boltzmann brains.
However, you’ve no evidence that you’re not a Boltzmann brain. You choose to accept on faith that you are not and, desiring to be consistent and even-handed, you further choose to accept on faith that the entire visible universe is just as complex as it seems to be (which would likely be false if e.g. we’re in a simulation).
You point out that adopting such priors requires biting an unpleasant bullet. This is not a reason for someone not to adopt it and indeed bite the bullet. The real reason is purely psychological: people don’t want to accept a Boltzmann prior, they’re not built that way.
Of course I write this from the POV of someone who does not accept the Boltzmann prior. From the POV of someone who does, time itself does not properly exist—or at least they always expect to cease coherently thinking in the few seconds with overwhelming probability—so an explanation based on psychology is problematic since psychology takes time to happen in a brain...