Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | July 2026

Hello, everyone, welcome to the July 2026 Ask Me Anything edition of the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. I'd kind of planned out a uh intro here because I just wrote a thread on Blue Sky where I talk about Boltzmann Brains. I went on a little Boltzmann brain rant. And I thought that'd be a perfect lead in to the AMA. Uh, but then I realized there we have an AMA question about exactly this topic, so it just makes more sense. to do it in the body of the podcast, which leaves me nothing to say. For the intro, and you know what? That's okay. We don't need anything special for the intro. You're here for the AMA, not for the intro. I will do the usual thing of thanking Patreon supporters of Mindscape who are the people who make these AMAs possible. Patreon supporters of Mindscape, well known worldwide to be the most attractive, intelligent, and charming people, uh, that anyone has ever met in their lives. And it's kind of amazing that there's such a

coincidence or correlation between being a Mindscape supporter and those other good qualities, uh no real idea why that's true, but it turns out to be true empirically. And amazingly, you could be uh Patreon supporter of Mindscape. It's not that hard. No initiation hazing rituals or anything like that. Just go to patreon.com slash Sean M Carol and sign up. Nominal fee gets you membership in this elite community. as well as add free versions of the podcast and the right to ask AMA questions. So your name could appear on a future Mindscape episode. Uh it's just all part of the bargain. And with that Let's go. Uh

Uh Uh Eric Olav Chen asks, Could you give an overview of the current state of debate on Boltzmann brains? I'm specifically curious about, number one, how long the current evidence is, how strong the current evidence is from the Swampland program, the long lived the sitter space is not possible at all in quantum gravity. And number two, how widely accepted is the argument you put forward with Body and Pollock? that eternal decided space does not support the kinds of fluctuations that give rise to Boltzmann brains at all. Right, so as I mentioned in the intro, uh Boltzmann brains have been on my mind for a while. So I've been thinking about them and I did a little

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