You would be trying to run the amount and speed of life down on an asymptotic curve that was nevertheless just slightly faster than the curve towards total entropy.
Is the total subjective time finite or infinite?
That said, even with total entropy you get the occasional quantum fluctuation that creates a small, local gradient again—in fact, arbitrarily large gradients if you wait arbitrarily long times;
Does the expansion of space pose a problem? If you had a universe of a constant size, you’d expect fluctuations in entropy to create arbitrarily large gradients in energy if you wait long enough, but if it keeps spreading out, the probability of a gradient of a given size ever happening would be less than one, wouldn’t it?
Also, wouldn’t we all be Boltzmann brains if it worked like that?
The intention was to make it infinite, otherwise there’s no use to the process. You’ll notice that the laws of thermodynamics don’t say anything about the shape of the downward trend, so it is at least conceivable that it allows a non-convergent series.
If you had a universe of a constant size, you’d expect fluctuations in entropy to create arbitrarily large gradients in energy if you wait long enough, but if it keeps spreading out, the probability of a gradient of a given size ever happening would be less than one, wouldn’t it?
This doesn’t look obvious to me. You get more vacuum to play with; the probability per unit volume should remain constant.
Also, wouldn’t we all be Boltzmann brains if it worked like that?
This doesn’t look obvious to me. You get more vacuum to play with; the probability per unit volume should remain constant.
I was assuming that there has to be stuff in space for stuff to happen. I guess I was wrong.
Do you know we aren’t? :)
There’s a chance that our experiences are just random, which we can’t do much to reduce. All we can do is look at the probability of physics working a certain way given that we are not random. That cosmology would be ridiculously unlikely given that we are not random, because that would require that we not be Boltzmann brains, which is extraordinarily unlikely.
Is the total subjective time finite or infinite?
Does the expansion of space pose a problem? If you had a universe of a constant size, you’d expect fluctuations in entropy to create arbitrarily large gradients in energy if you wait long enough, but if it keeps spreading out, the probability of a gradient of a given size ever happening would be less than one, wouldn’t it?
Also, wouldn’t we all be Boltzmann brains if it worked like that?
The intention was to make it infinite, otherwise there’s no use to the process. You’ll notice that the laws of thermodynamics don’t say anything about the shape of the downward trend, so it is at least conceivable that it allows a non-convergent series.
This doesn’t look obvious to me. You get more vacuum to play with; the probability per unit volume should remain constant.
Could be. Do you know we aren’t? :)
I was assuming that there has to be stuff in space for stuff to happen. I guess I was wrong.
There’s a chance that our experiences are just random, which we can’t do much to reduce. All we can do is look at the probability of physics working a certain way given that we are not random. That cosmology would be ridiculously unlikely given that we are not random, because that would require that we not be Boltzmann brains, which is extraordinarily unlikely.