- The Boltzmann brain thought experiment suggests that it might be more likely for a single brain to spontaneously form in a void, complete with a memory of having existed in our universe, rather than for the entire universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it actually did. Physicists use the Boltzmann brain thought experiment as a reductio ad absurdum argument for evaluating competing scientific theories.
- XOR (chiark.greenend.org.uk)
So I collected some thoughts together and gave a lecture on XOR. Slightly to my own surprise, I was able to spend a full hour talking about it – and then over the course of the next couple of weeks I remembered several other things I could usefully have mentioned.