From Tim Jackson
Can someone tell me what is the opposite of a Boltzmann brain (29 March, p 46)? It seems to be a self-reproducing brain that arises through a copy-construction process, not spontaneously from thermal noise. But the complexity of a zygote is many orders of magnitude lower than that of a brain. So random thermal noise will far sooner produce “Boltzmann zygotes”, as unlike ours as you may care to imagine.
In a suitable environment these will not only grow into brain-containing organisms, but may breed species that may go on to colonise whole galaxies, and inevitably in the fullness of time invade our own – leaving us not only atypical but extinct.
Rossendale, Lancashire, UK
