Consciousness is simply an illusion emergent of a Boltzmann brain configuration....

[Time Traveler]

Don't take my stupid ideas away from me! I need them!

Be careful, Rob. Isn't that the same cry of almost every religious adherent on the planet? A better motto might be: Please disabuse me of any illusions I may harbor. Help me clarify my understanding of all that is true and dismiss that which is false.

[Neo-Scholastic]

About as likely as Last Tuesdayism.

[robvalue]

Don't take my stupid ideas away from me! I need them!

Be careful, Rob. Isn't that the same cry of almost every religious adherent on the planet? A better motto might be: Please disabuse me of any illusions I may harbor. Help me clarify my understanding of all that is true and dismiss that which is false.

Yeah, I was only playing

I don't cling to any ideas. At least, I try not to. I'm always happy to correct any mistakes in my thinking or beliefs.

[JuliaL]

5) Just because something is logically possible doesn't prove its existence.

Boltzman brain?
Dunno.
Show me.

I've got my own (borrowed, stolen) worldview.  The proposition that the ultra-verse is, or is not, infinite and random is unfalsifiable because we are limited in our investigations to probing only within the volume which is ordered.  Getting farther out only yields garbage which could be everything else, but also might not.  I'm open to arguments to the contrary, but failing that I have to conclude that the ultimate question and the ultimate answer are ultimately unanswerable.

Closer to home, I'm hoping that at my demise, there will be a sign in the sky which reads:
GAME OVER....to continue, press X on controller at which point I'll be able to start again from my most recent save point.

[Time Traveler]

One other consideration. If the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis is based on the concept of matter randomly coming together to form various things (like pizzas, or teapots, or brains) given an infinite amount of time, one must also consider that the matter in our universe is probably NOT infinite. Protons, for example, are thought to have a half-life of about 10^31 years or so. A very, very long time, to be sure, but certainly nowhere near the infinite time scales imagined when considering the chances of a Boltzmann Brain forming. Furthermore, given the accelerating expansion of the universe at present, if this trend continues into the future, it will be less likely that matter will be able to clump together to form anything, including galaxies, solar systems, planets... and especially random brains. The more I think about this hypothesis, the less probable it seems to become.

[JuliaL]

One other consideration. If the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis is based on the concept of matter randomly coming together to form various things (like pizzas, or teapots, or brains) given an infinite amount of time, one must also consider that the matter in our universe is probably NOT infinite. Protons, for example, are thought to have a half-life of about 10^31 years or so. A very, very long time, to be sure, but certainly nowhere near the infinite time scales imagined when considering the chances of a Boltzmann Brain forming. Furthermore, given the accelerating expansion of the universe at present, if this trend continues into the future, it will be less likely that matter will be able to clump together to form anything, including galaxies, solar systems, planets... and especially random brains. The more I think about this hypothesis, the less probable it seems to become.

Sure you can consider the life span of protons and conclude a finite time/space.  That does not take into account any number of alternatives.  
One, that there is an underlying substrate on which protons reside which is in fact eternal and infinite.  
Two, that at some point, where space has expanded enough and average mass density has become assymptotically zero, what we consider physical laws become in effect suggestions.  e.g. before Planck time, at singularities, our observed regularities don't apply.
That tomorrow may not be essentially like yesterday even though, for billions of years as far as we can tell, it has been.  Extrapolating indefinitely from current observations bears a similarity to young earth creationist arguments: From the current rate the moon is receding, a 4 billion year earth would have had the moon at its core.  From the rate of salination of oceans, if the world were old, the seas would be pure salt by now.

To preempt an objection that we can only infer from what we observe.
Here's an analogy with respect to lack of causation in QM.
If you were to examine encrypted packets passing from bank to bank, you might well conclude there was only noise there, no signal.  Without the key to decrypt them, this would be a reasonable conclusion.  Yet the banks can reliably balance their accounts.  A more modest interpretation is that the data only looks random.  It could be that we lack the ability to look in the direction where the key lies.  The universe looks ordered and predictable strictly to the degree to which it looks ordered and predictable.  Even if we knew it all, we wouldn't know that we knew it all.
Every time we've been able to see farther, the universe has gotten bigger.  The shaman's model included dances to bring rain.  The monotheistic religions of the mid east were largely limited in their imaginations to the mid-east.  It's only been a century since nebulae were considered near earth objects.  The reletivists mixed time and space into something that fails to connect with our intuitions.  Then dark energy etc happened.  To think that we've finally got it and there shortly won't be anything left to discover continues to ignore this history as does the position that everything there is is much like what we see. 
My wonder is whether there is a hard limit to what we can find out about a universe which could be massively larger than what we can investigate.  And if we could ever tell.

[FatAndFaithless]

Well, I understand some of the words in his thread.

[Time Traveler]

Sure you can consider the life span of protons and conclude a finite time/space.  

That's not at all what I conclude. The fact that protons may be finite within the universe is not meant to imply that space and time itself are necessarily limited. In other words, while normal matter may have a lifespan, the universe may itself be eternal. My point is that IF Boltzmann Brains rely on material elements to exist (similar but perhaps not identical to our brains), THEN they may have a limited window of finite time in which to form IF protons do indeed decay OR the expansion of the universe is such that it eventually forces matter apart. I think you may have read into my original statement more than I meant to imply.

[Phosphorescent Panties]

I've often wondered what gives human beings self awareness and consciousness. I think that understanding why that happens would put a lot of things into perspective.

[Heat]

There's no way to test this type of hypothesis in any measurable way with current technology, so I don't really see how it's beneficial to be theorizing whether it is right or wrong. Even if you make a solid argument for why it's correct, you're not tipping the scale in any direction. Claiming this is correct before being able to test the hypothesis is essentially falsifying arguments that have yet to be presented. That's not how science works, and that is not a scientific conclusion.