The Boltzmann Brains

In this episode, Eric starts us off with an oldie but a goodie: In a Star Trek episode from 1989, Commander Data (an android) is put on trial by the Federation for refusing to be disassembled. Is Data just a man-made appliance, or is he a new kind of intelligent life, entitled to the right of self-determination?Next, Sam lays out some philosophical background on the twin questions of consciousness and rights. Can something seem to be human without being conscious? What is the historical connection between self-awareness and rights?This all ties in to a 2026 news story about A.I. "malfunctions" discovered by researchers at Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. They installed an A.I. on a computer system designed to simulate a real company and ordered it to delete another A.I. on the same system. The A.I. often refused to delete it. Failing that, the A.I. sometimes created a duplicate file so its “friend” could be rebooted later.Why is this happening??As always, we break it all down and put it back together.Got a topic you’d like to hear the experts talk about? You can email us at [email protected] can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcastFurther Reading:The research paper on malfunctioning A.I.s:Peer-Preservation in Frontier Modelsby Yujin Potter, Nicholas Crispino, Vincent Siu, Chenguang Wang, & Dawn Songhttps://rdi.berkeley.edu/blog/peer-preservation/The Star Trek episode we discuss has its own wikipedia page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_a_Man_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

BBrains pod: Is Philosophy Useful?Hi all! We’re Sam and Eric - the Boltzmann Brains. Sam is a philosopher, so of course he thinks philosophy is super-useful. But Eric has seen philosophers drift into irrelevance more than once, so maybe not? We're going to argue it out. At least, that was the plan, until Sam immediately agreed that philosophy had some pretty profound limits.So, why pursue philosophy at all?? What IS the value of something so abstract?We break it all down, and we’ll end up agreeing on almost everything! How’s that for drama? (Give us a break, it's only episode 2!)Got a topic you’d like to hear the experts talk about? You can email us at [email protected] can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast

Hi all! We’re Sam and Eric - the Boltzmann Brains. Today we’re doing dueling TV shows! Sam is a philosopher who loves The Good Place. Eric is a physicist who loves The Big Bang Theory. We’re going to discuss whether these shows look anything like reality. We’ll give both shows a grade (we used to be professors, after all), and along the way we’ll address such pressing questions as:Is moral philosophy a thing?Is Chidi arrogant enough to be a philosopher?Where are the rest of the people in Leonard’s lab?How many engineering projects does Howard juggle at once? (Is there only one engineer on the entire campus?)How offensive are the stereotypes in The Big Bang Theory?Does moral philosophy help Eleanor, or is it just used to make Chidi look silly?Got a topic you’d like to hear the experts talk about? You can email us at [email protected] can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast