A relatively brief explanation of Boltzmann Brains

(Initially written for the LW Wiki, but then I realized it was looking like a post instead.) In 1895, the physicist Ignaz Robert Schütz, who worked as an assistant to the eminent physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, wondered if our observed universe had simply assembled by a random fluctuation of order from a universe otherwise in thermal equilibrium. The idea was published by Boltzmann in 1896, properly credited to Schütz, and has been associated with Boltzmann ever since.