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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8674451" data-attributes="member: 177">I don't know that everything ought to be played for maximum emotional impact.  Because, honestly, maximum impact then calls for Doctor M'Benga to be mourning and worrying that he made the wrong choice for a long time.  This way, he gets a bittersweet mourning of separatioin, but understanding that he made a good choice, and that his daughter is happy.The episode is the absolute worst use of the Boltzmann Brain concept, but fine, I'll let it go.[spoiler="For those who care..."]Back in 1896 (so, before Einstein and Relativity) there was a big problem in the field of Cosmology.  Basically - how come we see an ordered universe?  Thermodymanics told them that he universe should tend towards a disordered state.  So, why wasn't it in such a state?Ludwig Boltzmann suggested that maybe the universe we see is the result of a random fluctuation - that a disordered universe could just... fall into an ordered state.  With enough time, all low-probability events become possible, and all, wo why not?The Boltzmann brain is not a real posited possibility.  It is a reductio ad absurdum argument against Boltzmann's idea.  The ordered universe contains brains and such, right?  So, what's more likely - that an entire universe fell into that ordered state that contains many brains, or it spontaneously manifested just one brain, (presumably Boltzmann's) complete with sense memories that it existed in this universe?This became a measuring stick for cosmological theories - if your cosmological model is less likely than your own brain just manifested itself randomly, your model is probably not correct.[/color][/spoiler]</blockquote>

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