Ship of Fools: A fine tuned universe

Thread: A fine tuned universe - a cosmic question Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Green Mario (# 18090) on :

What do people here think about the idea that the universe seems to be fine tuned in a way that makes life possible.

Is this an argument for the existence of God or is this just the latest incarnation of the God of the gaps being invoked to understand something that we can't currently understand but will fully understand at some point....or does it point to our universe being one of many in a multiverse?

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Imagine that there are many universes. Some, maybe even most, are inhospitable to life. Where will the beings self-aware enough to be aware of all this develop? Only in those universes that tolerate life.

In other words, maybe this has nothing to do with God. Maybe it is just a function of there needing to be life before anybody can be around to speculate about it.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
What do people here think about the idea that the universe seems to be fine tuned in a way that makes life possible.

Only life as we know it. We're sitting on a microscopic dot in an infinite universe of wonder and claiming that the whole thing is set up just for us. How arrogant we are.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
Is this an argument for the existence of God

Well, it could be. But, IMO, not a very strong one. It would only be an argument for the existence of God if it could be proven beyond doubt that there could be no other explanation for the observation that we are here to observe. And, there are a range of other possible explanations (which may not be correct ... but unless you can disprove all of them an argument that "God did it" cannot be convincing).

quote:
does it point to our universe being one of many in a multiverse?

That would certainly be one hypothesis that could be true. Providing all parts of a multiverse are slightly different then the odds that one part is conducive to life drop dramatically. There are several versions of multiverse hypotheses.

Or, there could be something fundamental in the laws of physics that makes a fine tuned universe more likely. Is there something about quantum gravity that stopped inflation at the point where the expansion rate sits on that critical rate where the universe didn't continue to fly apart too fast, or collapse into itself again.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
What do people here think about the idea that the universe seems to be fine tuned in a way that makes life possible.
Only life as we know it. We're sitting on a microscopic dot in an infinite universe of wonder and claiming that the whole thing is set up just for us. How arrogant we are.

If part (or parts) of a multiverse are suitable for life to develop then life that develops there would find that part of the universe home. Nothing surprising there. The lifeforms in another universe where the nuclear stellar resonances mean carbon is very rare but silicon is common would say the same.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

I suppose I would argue that this universe is very finely tuned to allow for life - there are many factors that are crucial for life to happen, for starts and planets to have been created, for a coherent system to exist that may be able to sustain life.

The question is, what are the alternatives, what if some of these were different? In many cases, small changes mean that the universe is not viable. So our universe, the one we exist in, is one of a microscopically small number of conceivable universes that are viable.

Of these viable universes, it may be that a moderate proportion are suitable for life. It may be that these conditions tend to cause stars and planets to form. It may be that the natural way for planetary systems to form is broadly similar to our solar system. Or it may be that our environment is very unusual - in which case it is likely that what we have will occur, just not very often.

The reports of other exo-planets that might be in the goldilocks zone suggest that our system is one that is not uncommon. So maybe earth-like planets are a natural phenomena because of the conditions that cause a viable universe. In which case, viable universes tend to mean intelligent life.

Does it offer proof for or against God? Not really. It is proof that we are not just random - or maybe we are just a random fluctuation of an essentially delirious multiverse.

I think the existence of God is something we have to deal with accepting that we are here, not based on proofs of why we are here. To ask "what if we were not here?" or even - the same question differently - "what if this cosmological constant was different?" is to ask about something that is not the case. It is into the realm of fiction - maybe interesting fiction, but fiction, not fact, so not something that should be at the basis of our theological formulation.

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
What do people here think about the idea that the universe seems to be fine tuned in a way that makes life possible.

It shouldn't be surprising, as it's only in such a universe that the question can be asked.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

Indeed, this would only be life as we know it. (Plus--do incorporeal beings count as life if they are not made of matter?) And God may be quite interested in all manner of things that we would not recognize as life. [Smile]

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

Whenever people discuss matters of this sort, they always seem to lose the distinctions between fact and fancy and hope. However much one may want to believe that there is life elsewhere, there is as yet no reason to think that there is life anywhere in the universe other than on this planet. We have a long list of planets on which there appears to be no possibility of life and only a few (extra-solar) planets on which life seems even plausible. There are plenty of very hopeful people who say there is a high probability of life elsewhere, but their statements are simply based on their hopes. We don't really know enough about how life came about on this planet to say much about other planets (other than the necessity of liquid water).

Some people will point to UFO reports as evidence of visitors from elsewhere, but this is terrestrial evidence; we don't see UFOs near Venus or Mars. I suppose you can bring up ghosts or angels, but (a) their existence is hotly debated, (b) this is still terrestrial, and (c) ghosts and angels are not life in any ordinary sense.

Of course, it will be very interesting if it turns out that there is life elsewhere, but hoping will not make it so. What probably is possible, if we want enough to do it, is for us to visit other planets and establish life there.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I suppose you can bring up ghosts or angels, but (a) their existence is hotly debated, (b) this is still terrestrial, and (c) ghosts and angels are not life in any ordinary sense.

(a) Their existence is hotly debated by some, but if we're talking about most forms of Christian cosmology, at very least angels and our souls (whether or not any of the latter hang around Earth after death) are accepted as pretty basic; (2) ghosts would be terrestrial; angels most definitely not; (3) I can accept that they are not "life" in the usual sense, though how it might apply to elemental or other entities (which are not an intrinsic part of most Christian theologies) I have no idea... again, life but not as we know it, I suppose.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
However much one may want to believe that there is life elsewhere, there is as yet no reason to think that there is life anywhere in the universe other than on this planet.

But, life elsewhere is irrelevant. We know that the universe is fine tuned to produce life as we know it - change one of several parameters by a miniscule amount and we would not be here. If there is life elsewhere, and it is significantly different from us (eg: not carbon based) then that might expand the range of values some parameters could take and still allow life to exist. But, that wouldn't change the fine tuning question significantly, except by allowing other life forms to ask it too.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Schroedinger's cat: In many cases, small changes mean that the universe is not viable.

What do you mean with a universe not being viable?

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

The main problem from an apologetic perspective is that if this is the only universe then it's not obvious how to say whether anything about this universe is improbable. Our sample size is one; this does not allow for statistically significant conclusions.

From a theological perspective, there's a different problem. God is free to create any sort of creation God wants. Furthermore, there can be no creation of any sort without God (theologically speaking). Therefore, there is no way to look at any specific feature of the universe and say that specific feature is evidence for God. The universe could exist without life with God, and, according to Christian theology, could not exist without life without God.

Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
There are plenty of very hopeful people who say there is a high probability of life elsewhere, but their statements are simply based on their hopes. We don't really know enough about how life came about on this planet to say much about other planets (other than the necessity of liquid water).

Unfortunately we don't know much! Theories range from those who think life is abundant in the universe, perhaps carried around in suspended animation on comets and metors, to those who think it's unique to earth. We do know that all earth life is related, which could mean that life only started once on earth, or could mean that only the generation of life from which we're descended survived. The universe, and especially the earth is indeed fine tuned to our existence. An oversized moon, tectonic plates, our peculiar tilt have all driven the evolutionary process in a way that must be rare. But the vastness of the universe tell us that it's unlikely to be unique.

So it can't tell us much about God. The Albanian born American physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton believes in an infinite multiverse which leaves less room for God. But our brains can't deal with infinity, and though I find her work fascinating, it's only one of several theories around at present.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

The answers to this question have been conveniently answered by any number of Star Trek episodes and Charles Darwin (unless I mis-almost-quote and misattribute the penultimate sentence incorrectly). Us empty bags of mostly water are but one way of being alive. A dog might as well meditate on the mind of Newton. The thing rests on mystery: of faith and of questions where we haven't any appreciable amount data to intelligently guess.

Posted by Green Mario (# 18090) on :

I have to admit personally I am totally unimpressed with the fact that the earth might have rare factors that make life possible - there are billions upon billions of planets in the universe, we can only live on one that makes life possible.

I think the fact that the universe appears fine tuned is more interesting precisely because there is only one universe we are aware of - this to me suggests a designer (although a different view like that of the Astronomer Royal Martin Ress is that this suggests there are many universes).

I think that life might look quite different to us only changes slightly how fine tuned the universe appears as my understanding (and admit I have not studied science to a decent level) is that some of the parameters that appear fine tuned if they were slightly different would lead to universes where any kind of life would be inconceivable (eg universes where no big lumps of matter existed at all or which were all hydrogen and nothing else)

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
Schroedinger's cat: In many cases, small changes mean that the universe is not viable.
What do you mean with a universe not being viable?

I mean that it is incapable of existing or of supporting a concept of time.

So it might explode into nothingness within seconds, and so is not viable. Or it may be so utterly stable that nothing happens. The state of viability, like ours, is a very subtle combination of constants. And dark matter.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

An infinite multiverse seems very like God, since everything is realized that is potential; or if something is possible, then it is actual. I suppose the difference is intelligence, since the multiverse is generally reckoned not to be.

Old joke that if God is possible, then in a multiverse, he is actual, but that also applies to many other gods I suppose.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

I think the fine-tuning argument gets the whole thing backwards. The universe isn't fine-tuned to us, we are fine-tuned to it.

If anything had been different, maybe a completely different form of life would have emerged. Maybe no life would have emerged. I simply don't understand why so many people take it as axiomatic that life as we know it had to evolve, and therefore the universe had to have been set up in exactly the right way for it to happen. We're just not that important.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

While that's true, we are fine tuned to live in our universe. It is also true that many parameters in the universe are fine tuned to allow any conceivable life to exist.

If immediately post inflation the rate of expansion of the universe had been marginally smaller, then the whole thing would have rapidly collapsed back into a singularity before anything interesting could have happened. If the expansion rate had been marginally faster then there would not be enough matter (dark and regular) to allow galaxies and stars to form. In both cases, it is impossible to imagine life of any form developing.

Other fine tuning parameters, nuclear resonances that allow lots of carbon and silicon to form in stars for example, would result in a universe where any life would need to be radically different. But, may not exclude life using other building blocks.

Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
What do people here think about the idea that the universe seems to be fine tuned in a way that makes life possible.

I don't think I know what it means for the universe to be fine tuned.

I get that the universe has certain physical laws, like gravity, which follow rules that we can describe mathematically. I'm not sure what it means to say that gravity is fine-tuned. God can presumably set the strength of gravity to any value he likes, but as God's involvement is the thing in issue, I don't think I know what it means to say that anything else outside the universe could change the settings. Presumably, whatever it is (if not God) that determined the strength of gravity is also a fact about the universe (or multiverse). Could that fact, whatever it is, about the universe have been different? I don't know, and it would surprise me if anyone else did.

I think I see it as a weak argument for God. IF there is a God, it seems to me more likely that he make a universe where some sort of complexity is possible than one where it isn't, since God has the capacity to understand and interact with complex things, and because it is easier to imagine complex things being created for some purpose than a universe where nothing much happens. Given the fact of God, a life-sustaining universe seems more likely than a lifeless one.

But it is the reverse proposition that's being advanced - given a life-sustaining universe, is God more likely than if the universe were lifeless? I suppose so, if we assume that life-sustaining universes are a small sub-set of all possible ones, it is more likely that God exists if the one known universe belongs to the small sub-set of possibilities that God might presumed to be most interested in. The trouble is, that while it makes sense to talk of other universes as real possibilities if God exists (since we know he could have made them) but much less clear to me that they are real possibilities in God's absence. If there's no God, then quite plausibly this life-sustaining universe is not part of a sub-set of many possibilities, it could be the only universe that there could ever possibly be. Unless we knew otherwise, the fact that this universe exists may be no more remarkable than the fact that any universe exists, since those propositions may actually be identical.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

<crosspost with Alan and Eliab who made similar points in part>

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I think the fine-tuning argument gets the whole thing backwards. The universe isn't fine-tuned to us, we are fine-tuned to it.

Yes, we are fine-tuned to the universe in a sense. But the point of fine-tuning is the following: physical law as we now conceive it has a whole lot "natural constants". For example, in Newton's law of gravity

F=G*m1*m2/r^2

the terms "m1" (mass of the first body), "m2" (mass of the second body) and "r" (distance between the bodies) are variables. They depend on what we are applying the law to. Likewise "F" (the gravitational force between the masses) is a variable. Though the way the equation is written (with "F" on the left hand side) suggests the intention to treat this force as a prediction of the law from knowing the masses and the distance. (Four variables, but one equation, which leaves three independent variables.)

However, there is one more term there, "G". It is considered to be a natural constant, known from measurements as approximately being

G=6.67384 *10^-11 m^3/(kg*s^2)

We do not change this number in our calculations, it is a characteristic of just how strong gravitation happens to be.

Now we can do a thought experiment. What would happen if the law of gravity remained as it was, but the natural constant characterising its strength changed. So for example, what if instead of the above value we now assume

G=7.00000*10^-11 m^3/(kg*s^2)

We can then start to predict what the universe would be like, if it ran on such modified laws.

Now, it turns out that quite a few natural constants cannot be changed much at all without conditions arising that seem to make life impossible. For example, the cosmological constant has to be really close to zero, or life is not possible. If it is positive and too large, the universe will expand so rapidly that matter cannot coalesce into galaxies, stars, etc. If it is negative and too large, the universe will collapse back into a "point" before anything has had the time to develop.

This particular fine-tuning problem appears to be made worse by the fact that our current best prediction of the cosmological constant from the quantum vacuum energy, are about a factor of 10^120 too large. That has been called the worst prediction in the entire history of physics.

However, this points to a general idea about all fine-tuning problems. Maybe our natural constants are actually tuned by more physical law (with fewer constants). For example, maybe some physical law exists which forces the cosmological constant to be exactly zero. In which case our fine-tuning problem just stops being one.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
If anything had been different, maybe a completely different form of life would have emerged. Maybe no life would have emerged. I simply don't understand why so many people take it as axiomatic that life as we know it had to evolve, and therefore the universe had to have been set up in exactly the right way for it to happen. We're just not that important.

I actually would say that we are the single most important thing in the entire created universe, but that's a religious/philosophical statement, not a physical one.

The force of the fine-tuning arguments is revealed by the attempt to "solve" them with the multiverse. It is of course true that if we have just a single sample of some probability distribution, then we we cannot really anything about the chances. So if I hand out exactly one lottery ticket, to you, and you happen to win the lottery, then in some sense that is just that. It happened. There is no a priori reason why it shouldn't happen. But let's say you now inquire how likely it was that you did win this lottery. If I tell you that it was determined by a coin flip, heads came up and your ticket showed heads, then you are probably satisfied. That seems reasonable enough. If I say that I had an urn with a hundred numbers, and I picked one number from it at random, and you happened to have that number, then you will probably say "Wow, that was lucky." However, if I say that I had an urn with a billion numbers, and I pulled at random a million numbers from it, and your ticket had those million numbers, and on top of that as required in this lottery even in the right sequence, then what do you say? There is no compelling reason why you shouldn't say "Wow, that was really lucky!" But you would not be human if you didn't suspect that the lottery was rigged in your favour. There's lucky, and then there's "yeah, bullshit".

This feeling of "yeah, bullshit" is so painful to physicists that they have taken Ockham's razor and thrown it out of the window. They have invented the multiverse, an infinite (or near infinite) collection of utterly unobservable and completely speculative entities just so that they can say to you: Well, yes, it is incredibly lucky that you won this crazy lottery. But look, there's an infinite (or near infinite) number of people that also took a lottery ticket. Don't ask me where all those people are, you can't possibly interact with them in any way, but trust me, they are out there. Given that all these people were getting their tickets, somebody was bound to win. It happened to be you. Congratulations.

Well, that works in a mechanistic sense. So it satisfies many physicists, apparently. In terms of philosophy, I would say that they have take a (near) infinite heap of bullshit and shoved it to a place where they do not care. It's such a blatant intellectual placebo that if would be hilarious if people weren't so serious about it all.

(I will admit to being overly unkind, indeed polemical, in my assessment there. Actually, the multiverse can be seen as a "natural prediction" of speculative theories that deal with actual observables. However, there is a difference between speculative theories that predict previously unknown things that can be measured, and those that predict ones that cannot ever be measured in any way. The former are the best of theories, really, the latter are, well, just not particularly attractive to my mind. I do not take them as evidence that there is in fact a multiverse. Why? Because experience tells me that if we somehow did invent a way of observing whether there is a multiverse, and found that there is only this universe, then it would take about three weeks before theorists would propose alternative theories that explain the known data without a multiverse. We need data to select the right theory from the near infinite inventiveness of the human mind, otherwise we are likely just ending up with a scientific fantasy.)

[ 05. August 2014, 10:46: Message edited by: IngoB ]

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The force of the fine-tuning arguments is revealed by the attempt to "solve" them with the multiverse. It is of course true that if we have just a single sample of some probability distribution, then we we cannot really anything about the chances. So if I hand out exactly one lottery ticket, to you, and you happen to win the lottery, then in some sense that is just that. It happened. There is no a priori reason why it shouldn't happen. But let's say you now inquire how likely it was that you did win this lottery. If I tell you that it was determined by a coin flip, heads came up and your ticket showed heads, then you are probably satisfied. That seems reasonable enough. If I say that I had an urn with a hundred numbers, and I picked one number from it at random, and you happened to have that number, then you will probably say "Wow, that was lucky." However, if I say that I had an urn with a billion numbers, and I pulled at random a million numbers from it, and your ticket had those million numbers, and on top of that as required in this lottery even in the right sequence, then what do you say? There is no compelling reason why you shouldn't say "Wow, that was really lucky!" But you would not be human if you didn't suspect that the lottery was rigged in your favour. There's lucky, and then there's "yeah, bullshit".

I disagree with the analogy, because the aim of a lottery is to match numbers on a pre-existing ticket with those drawn at random, but I see no such aim in the universe.

A better analogy to my mind would be you saying you had an urn with a billion numbers in it, and pulled at random a million numbers from it, and then gave me a ticket with those numbers. Yes, the odds of it being those exact million numbers in that exact order were staggeringly low, but that's not particularly important because they didn't have to match any pre-existing ticket. And if you tried to tell me how ridiculously lucky I was to have that exact sequence of numbers on my ticket I'd give you quite a funny look!

To use the analogy the way you did is to assume that before the universe came into being there was a pre-existing "ticket" that it had to match in order for me to be typing this. I'm not convinced that's true.

quote:
This feeling of "yeah, bullshit" is so painful to physicists that they have taken Ockham's razor and thrown it out of the window. They have invented the multiverse, an infinite (or near infinite) collection of utterly unobservable and completely speculative entities just so that they can say to you: Well, yes, it is incredibly lucky that you won this crazy lottery. But look, there's an infinite (or near infinite) number of people that also took a lottery ticket. Don't ask me where all those people are, you can't possibly interact with them in any way, but trust me, they are out there. Given that all these people were getting their tickets, somebody was bound to win. It happened to be you. Congratulations.

In a manner of speaking I agree with that, in that all those other universes can be imagined. But I don't think they have any reality outside of our theorising about what might have been. To me, it's like saying "what if grass was blue". It may be an amusing diversion on a slow day, but the fact of the matter is that grass is green.

Furthermore, I tink a lot of this fine-tuning stuff is equivalent to the following chain of logic:

very few football kits are green
grass is green, so non-green football kits stand out well against it
therefore, grass must have been designed to be green so that our football kits would stand out well against it!

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

IngoB, I like your explanation, and I particularly like your critique of many-universes theory.

But isn't your lottery ticket analogy missing something? Isn't it more like, either you get the winning lottery ticket, or if you get a losing lottery ticket, you cease ever to have existed?

In which case, there's one person wandering around thinking how lucky they were to win the lottery ... and there's nobody wandering around thinking how crappy it is that they never existed.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The main problem from an apologetic perspective is that if this is the only universe then it's not obvious how to say whether anything about this universe is improbable. Our sample size is one; this does not allow for statistically significant conclusions.

From a theological perspective, there's a different problem. God is free to create any sort of creation God wants. Furthermore, there can be no creation of any sort without God (theologically speaking). Therefore, there is no way to look at any specific feature of the universe and say that specific feature is evidence for God. The universe could exist without life with God, and, according to Christian theology, could not exist without life without God.

I agree with Dafyd here.

I'm thinking a fine-tuned universe is a god of the gaps thing.

[ 05. August 2014, 12:41: Message edited by: Evensong ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

If God exists then there is no multiverse.

Unless an infinite and eternal object thought by God doesn't make God dependent on it. Isn't pantheistic. Can be panentheistic.

Which is ... meaningless.

If there is a multiverse then there is no God.

It gets better.

As God is, the single universe is absolutely perfectly fine tuned for life.

There isn't a trace of it apart from on Earth.

All we need is to detect more than trace oxygen in an extrasolar planet's atmosphere to prove that life evolves from non-life and that Jesus isn't unique.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

Not necessarily a "God of the gaps" thing.

"God did it that way" is a perfectly reasonable thing for a theist to declare, for those things which have a very strong scientific description as well as those which leave scientists scratching their heads and trying out various conjectures.

The problem is when "God did it that way" is followed by "and therefore scientific investigation will be fruitless". I happen to think that other postulated universes will be unobservable, and therefore the predictions of multi-verse conjectures will be untestable. That doesn't mean that such conjectures are worthless and unscientific, they can also relate to the early origins of this universe and it's subsequent development and future.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
If God exists then there is no multiverse.

...

If there is a multiverse then there is no God.

Martin, could you expand on your reasoning there? Why couldn't an infinite God create a multiverse? What fundamental difference is there between creating a universe and a multiverse? There's a difference of scale, but from the perspective of infinite eternity I don't see anything different in God creating a universe or a multiverse, anymore than there's a fundamental difference between a potter making one pot or thousands.

quote:

As God is, the single universe is absolutely perfectly fine tuned for life.

There isn't a trace of it apart from on Earth.

All we need is to detect more than trace oxygen in an extrasolar planet's atmosphere to prove that life evolves from non-life and that Jesus isn't unique.

I agree that we have observed no evidence of life elsewhere. But, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There may be life so different that we wouldn't recognise it as life if it fell at our feet (and, possibly they wouldn't recognise us as life either). Life may be very rare, and spread thinly through the universe and is simply too far away.

I don't see how oxygen elsewhere proves anything about life evolving from non-life. Our experience on earth quite clearly shows there is life here, there once wasn't and therefore life evolved from non-life. We know the universe is amenable to life, because we're here. Other life in the universe doesn't change that.

And, I don't follow your uniqueness of Christ comment at all. But, it doesn't appear to relate to the fine-tuning of the universe.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
A better analogy to my mind would be you saying you had an urn with a billion numbers in it, and pulled at random a million numbers from it, and then gave me a ticket with those numbers. Yes, the odds of it being those exact million numbers in that exact order were staggeringly low, but that's not particularly important because they didn't have to match any pre-existing ticket. And if you tried to tell me how ridiculously lucky I was to have that exact sequence of numbers on my ticket I'd give you quite a funny look!

To use the analogy the way you did is to assume that before the universe came into being there was a pre-existing "ticket" that it had to match in order for me to be typing this. I'm not convinced that's true.

That there is a match to be made simply expresses (in the analogy) that unless there constant of the universe are incredibly fine-tuned, no life will be around to observe that they are off. Winning the lottery hence corresponds to "being alive and wondering". Your variation does not work because in your case any and all lottery ticket numbers are acceptable. Whereas the analogy requires that most numbers are not acceptable (almost all variations of the constants do not lead to any kind of life, much less sapient life that can wonder about it all).

It remains true, of course, that a single ticket to an incredibly tough but fair lottery can win the lottery. And yes, the anthropic principe works. That is to say, if there is a TV show "Our Lucky Lottery Winners", then we can say with certainty that anybody interviewed on that show in fact has won the lottery. But that particular certainty does not really answer our suspicions. If there is one ticket handed out to a lottery, and it wins against a zillion to one odds, then we get suspicious that something is going on, that there is trickery at work. Not that there is a compelling statistical reason for that, but it just seems, well, "too unlikely to be true". To say "Hey, but you only know that this was a win because the winner appeared on that winner's TV show. You would never know if they had lost," does not really do anything about that kind of suspicion. That's true enough, but not really what we are worried about.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
In a manner of speaking I agree with that, in that all those other universes can be imagined. But I don't think they have any reality outside of our theorising about what might have been. To me, it's like saying "what if grass was blue". It may be an amusing diversion on a slow day, but the fact of the matter is that grass is green.

The problem is that a "brute fact" attitude is fundamentally anti-scientific. Just because you limit this "brute fact" to some corner where science cannot currently go does not change that. Imagine you answer the question "why is the sky blue" with "it just is". Imagine you consider that to be just an amusing diversion of a slow day, which however really should just be accepted as the way things are. Well, then you will never discover Rayleigh scattering, which is the actual reason why our sky is blue. I could of course also discuss why grass is typically green, and usually not blue, but that is a bit more complicated (involving a discussion of the role of chlorophyll among other things). Still, there are good reasons for that. In fact, once one starts looking, there's pretty much a reason for everything. That's just what science is, finding out all those many reasons why things are as they are.

To understand why fine-tuning is such a problem, you need to understand a bit how science actually works. A scientist has to make a choice where to invest her finite amount of energy and time to achieve progress. But the possibilities are truly infinite, and the signals are exceedingly confused. If it were not so, then someone else would already have noted this and researched it all. So scientists are trained to be ultra-sensitive oddness detectors. They literally do nothing else day and night than to hunt for some minuscule deviation, some tiny break in the established patterns. If somewhere something seems out of place, a bit weird, not kosher, strained... then scientists will be all over it in a flash. Just about the most common way in which that can happen is if something unlikely occurs. If you theory says that this has a one in a hundred thousand chance to happen, and then it does, any scientist will instantly stop what they are doing and say "Dude, did you see that? Why did that happen?"

Given that modus operandi, what do scientists do where their observations are clearly "statistical" and they cannot do anything about that? They assume that where they are at is "normal". For example, the basic assumption of much cosmology is that we do not sit in some super-exceptional part of the universe, but rather in a "typical" one. And hence that one can extrapolate from what one sees from here to what is out there in general. If you start with the assumption that you are an outlier, then it becomes near impossible to do science. How are you going to detect the break in patterns if you are the break in the pattern?

Now take the universe as a whole, the ultimate set of data, and say that it is in some way one specific realisation of what is possible in terms of physical law, with a virtual possibility to at least fiddle with all those "constants" if not the very structure of all those laws. And then say that as compared to all those possibilities the one realisation we see is utterly remarkable in its properties and near inconceivably improbable. This is the most horrendous torture to any scientist, the universe as the ultimate outlier, the mother of all pattern breaks. It's like a neo sign flashing "Explain me. Now." with a trillion watts. Terrifying screams of "But whhhhhyyyyyy?????" would be echoing around physics departments all over the world, were it not that physics is suffering from sever post-traumatic stress disorder over this and does a really good job at displacing the horror and concentrating on smaller things.

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
But isn't your lottery ticket analogy missing something? Isn't it more like, either you get the winning lottery ticket, or if you get a losing lottery ticket, you cease ever to have existed?

In which case, there's one person wandering around thinking how lucky they were to win the lottery ... and there's nobody wandering around thinking how crappy it is that they never existed.

See my answer to Marvin above, the bit about the "Our Lucky Lottery Winners" show. The anthropic principle answers why we end up observing a near impossibility. It basically says that there is no additional problem of detection. It does however not answer why the near impossibility occurred i the first place.

Another way of putting it is like this. Say we do an actual lottery draw involving billions of people. There is one winner, you. Now we start to systematically murder absolutely everybody who has not won the lottery. Wo is left? You. Is there a surprise that you won the lottery? Of course not, everybody else got killed. Yes, it was exceedingly unlikely that you would win. But somebody was going to win, it happened to be you and everybody else got killed, so there you are with your lottery ticket in your hand.

That's what you are thinking. Fine. That happens to be exactly the multiverse solution to the problem. But it is not the problem.

The problem is that there is just you, with a winning lottery ticket in the hand. And with a rule book of the lottery which tells you two things: 1) The odds are astronomical against you winning (even though you apparently did), and 2) everybody who does not win will be killed. You know of nobody and nothing else. Now, the explanation above of course works and seems reasonable. One good explanation indeed could be that the extermination of all non-winners has happened unbeknown to you, and you find yourself alone with a winning lottery ticket in hand because of that. However, the fact remains that that is pure speculation. You know of no other people, there is no trace of them at all. And alternative explanations are indeed possible. Maybe you are in fact alone with that lottery, but it is rigged, so that you were always going to get the winning ticket. Maybe you just got incredibly lucky.

You don't know. You just don't. What you do know is that given how the lottery is supposed to work, including the bit about killing all non-winners, it is terribly unlikely that you are alive with a winning ticket in your hand.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

I see no reason to think God hasn't created other universes. There could be all sorts of things out there. [Yipee]

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

My idea is, if I can do it, surely God can do it.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
My idea is, if I can do it, surely God can do it.

Yes, very interesting. If you run with that, you can end up in some Eastern religions, such as advaita, where the Self creates all.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

This whole multiple universes thing has something of a ring of ye old ontological argument about it. [Paranoid]

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
That there is a match to be made simply expresses (in the analogy) that unless there constant of the universe are incredibly fine-tuned, no life will be around to observe that they are off.

Perhaps. Or maybe if the "fine tuning" was a little off then a completely different form of life would exist. But that's not my point - my point is about whether the aim of the universe was to provide a perfect fit for our kind of life. I say not - we happened to come along, but not because it was planned that way.

quote:
Winning the lottery hence corresponds to "being alive and wondering". Your variation does not work because in your case any and all lottery ticket numbers are acceptable. Whereas the analogy requires that most numbers are not acceptable (almost all variations of the constants do not lead to any kind of life, much less sapient life that can wonder about it all).

Yes, I'm saying that from an overall perspective all numbers would have been acceptable. I don't think life was or is a required part or stated goal of the universe. It happened, but that's not a "win" for the universe, it's just a fact.

quote:
The problem is that a "brute fact" attitude is fundamentally anti-scientific.

Look, I've got no problem with anyone who wants to investigate the hows, whys and wherefores of the universe. I just get annoyed when they do so from a position that takes as axiomatic that life as we know it was in any way a target, aim or goal of existence itself. I hate the question "why are things so perfectly fine tuned for us?" because it assumes that we were the whole point in the first place.

quote:
Now take the universe as a whole, the ultimate set of data, and say that it is in some way one specific realisation of what is possible in terms of physical law, with a virtual possibility to at least fiddle with all those "constants" if not the very structure of all those laws.

I don't see why speculation about whether those "constants" could be different makes any more sense than speculation about whether 2+2 could ever equal other than 4. I mean sure, you can do any common mathematical formula you like while assuming that 2+2=5 and you'll come out with some crazy results, but that doesn't mean that 2+2=5 was ever actually a mathematical possibility.

quote:
And then say that as compared to all those possibilities the one realisation we see is utterly remarkable in its properties and near inconceivably improbable. This is the most horrendous torture to any scientist, the universe as the ultimate outlier, the mother of all pattern breaks. It's like a neo sign flashing "Explain me. Now." with a trillion watts.

It's not any more improbable or unlikely than any of the other possibilities, if indeed "other possibilities" is a sensible conjecture to start with.

quote:
Terrifying screams of "But whhhhhyyyyyy?????" would be echoing around physics departments all over the world, were it not that physics is suffering from sever post-traumatic stress disorder over this and does a really good job at displacing the horror and concentrating on smaller things.

Like I said, asking "but whhhhhyyyyyy is the universe the way it is?????" makes about as much sense to me as asking "but whhhhhyyyyyy does 2 plus 2 equal 4?????".

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Maybe you are in fact alone with that lottery, but it is rigged, so that you were always going to get the winning ticket. Maybe you just got incredibly lucky.

You don't know. You just don't. What you do know is that given how the lottery is supposed to work, including the bit about killing all non-winners, it is terribly unlikely that you are alive with a winning ticket in your hand.

Expressed like that, it becomes (as I often think it must) not so much a problem about the lottery, as a problem about me. And the analogy carries over to the fine-tuned universe "problem": it's not that "I" am living in a fine-tuned universe; it's that in any other possible universe (fine-tuned or otherwise), it is not "I" who am in it.

That, for me, is explanation enough.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
My idea is, if I can do it, surely God can do it.
Yes, very interesting. If you run with that, you can end up in some Eastern religions, such as advaita, where the Self creates all.

I think more like, if we can come up with all kinds of wonderful worlds and characters and creatures, why can't God? There could be worlds out there like Narnia or Middle Earth or Krypton or Perelandra or Discworld ... well, anything, really. And not just worlds like ours--I mean, there could be a Flatland or a Hypercubeland or something with strange creatures all praising God in ways we can only imagine by analogy, perhaps even things weirder than angels... [Yipee]

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Because our worlds are fictitious? Well, again, run with that and you might end up in some Eastern religions, where reality itself is a fiction, or more respectably, a construct.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

I don't understand what you're saying. [Confused]

I'm saying if we can create all kinds of wonderful things then God can create even more wonderful things, and why may He not have done so? [Confused]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Schroedinger's cat: I mean that it is incapable of existing or of supporting a concept of time.

I never understood this temporal bias. Why does a universe need to 'support' a concept of time in order to make life possible?

quote:
Marvin the Martian: Like I said, asking "but whhhhhyyyyyy is the universe the way it is?????" makes about as much sense to me as asking "but whhhhhyyyyyy does 2 plus 2 equal 4?????".

The latter one is a perfectly valid question.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

"Why is the universe the way it is?" is also a valid question. Science is basically built on answering that question (though, usually more focused on particular parts of the universe, such as "why is the sky blue?", than trying to explain the whole thing in one go).

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Like I said, asking "but whhhhhyyyyyy is the universe the way it is?????" makes about as much sense to me as asking "but whhhhhyyyyyy does 2 plus 2 equal 4?????".

The difference is that one can deduce 2 plus 2 = 4 from mathematical first principles. One cannot deduce the value of the cosmological constant or the gravitational constant from first principles. The basis of the fine-tuning argument is that one could deduce the gravitational and cosmological constants to a very high degree of accuracy if one's first principles were the relative physical laws and the fact that the universe has life in it. But it doesn't seem that 'the universe has life in it' ought to have the status of a physical law.
I'm not sold on the argument, but the fact does seem to call for comment.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
"Why is the universe the way it is?" is also a valid question. Science is basically built on answering that question (though, usually more focused on particular parts of the universe, such as "why is the sky blue?", than trying to explain the whole thing in one go).

Of course, it would be perfectly possible for the sky to be any other colour. All it would take is a different mixture or density of gases in the atmosphere.

ISTM that questions like "why is the sky blue?" are really about what causes the blueness of the sky. What I'm saying is, I don;t think anything caused universal constants to be what they are, any more than anything caused 2 plus 2 to equal 4. They are ways of quantifying, defining and predicting things, not things in themselves.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The difference is that one can deduce 2 plus 2 = 4 from mathematical first principles. One cannot deduce the value of the cosmological constant or the gravitational constant from first principles.

They are universal first principles. They may not be as simple as 2+2=4, but in terms of what they are there's little difference.

quote:
The basis of the fine-tuning argument is that one could deduce the gravitational and cosmological constants to a very high degree of accuracy if one's first principles were the relative physical laws and the fact that the universe has life in it.

Only because if the universe didn't have life in it there wouldn't be anyone to do the deduction. But if that's what you mean then you may as well say that if the earth was obliterated by a comet tomorrow and all life was destroyed then 2+2 would cease to equal 4. But that's not true - there would still be 4 gas giants in the solar system, even if there was no longer any life capable of observing and quantifying them.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

I never understood people who are satisfied with the answer "Otherwise, we wouldn't be here to ask this question".

Why is there life on Earth?
Why does Earth have an atmosphere?
Why was I born?

To all of these questions, we could say "Otherwise, you wouldn't be here to ask this question". But in none of this cases, we would be satisfied that this was an acceptable answer. Science can give us better answers to these questions. (In the latter case it involves my parents, a chalet in an Austrian valley and a large bottle of white wine.)

So when we ask questions about the nature of the Universe, why should we suddenly be satisfied with "Otherwise, we wouldn't be here to ask this question"? It's not even an answer.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
"Why is the universe the way it is?" is also a valid question. Science is basically built on answering that question (though, usually more focused on particular parts of the universe, such as "why is the sky blue?", than trying to explain the whole thing in one go).
Of course, it would be perfectly possible for the sky to be any other colour. All it would take is a different mixture or density of gases in the atmosphere.

ISTM that questions like "why is the sky blue?" are really about what causes the blueness of the sky. What I'm saying is, I don;t think anything caused universal constants to be what they are, any more than anything caused 2 plus 2 to equal 4. They are ways of quantifying, defining and predicting things, not things in themselves.

But, answering "why is the sky blue?" leads to knowledge of things like Raleigh scattering, which in turn allows us to predict the colour of the sky on other planets with different atmospheric compositions, densities etc. Then, "why does Raleigh scattering do that?" leads to knowledge of the properties of light and chemical bonds. And, so on and so forth to ever greater knowledge. All from a focused question about why one part of the universe is the way it is, part of the much larger "why is the universe the way it is?" question that is the bedrock of scientific enquiry. Most scientists just chip away at minor refinements to answering very small parts of that question, but we're all trying to get the best possible answer to that question.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I have trouble with the fine tuning argument. Most of the universe seems jury-rigged at best. I'd suggest "Wonderful Life" by Stephen Jay Gould which goes after a number of our assumptions within a detailed but accessible evolutionary perspective. From vestibular ossicles, tits on men to misplaced clitori (shouldn't clits be inside the vagina?), the argument of co-opted parts to later serve other functions makes it rather obvious that there is no grand design in biology.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Look, I've got no problem with anyone who wants to investigate the hows, whys and wherefores of the universe. I just get annoyed when they do so from a position that takes as axiomatic that life as we know it was in any way a target, aim or goal of existence itself. I hate the question "why are things so perfectly fine tuned for us?" because it assumes that we were the whole point in the first place.

While I fully support the idea that this universe is tailor-made to produce us (or at a minimum: some sapient and volitional life form), this simply is not a central premise or assumption of the fine-tuning argument. If one day we found a weird physical object in space, let's call it an arbitron for the sake of definiteness, and upon close examination concluded that an arbitron can only exist if the electromagnetic coupling has the value it actually has up to 20 digits of accuracy, then we do have a fine-tuning problem there. That does not mean that the arbitron is now "the point of the universe". I for one would then say that we humans are still "the point of the universe" and the arbitron is merely a kind of accidental feature of fine-tuning for us. And some arbitron fanatics may reverse this and say that humans are an accident of a universe fine-tuned to produce arbitrons.

Furthermore, you are to some extent confusing the explanation by anthropic principle with the actual fine-tuning challenge. The fine tuning of the cosmological constant, for example, is not needed just to produce humans, or life. It is needed to produce, well, anything somehow differentiated, like say stars and galaxies. For the wrong values you either get a rapidly thinning out "gas" turning into nothingness or a rapidly compressing "gas" turning into a reverse Big Bang. That something like humans could not exist in either state is part of the anthropic explanation why we humans are not observing either state. But you could perfectly well argue that the cosmological constant is tuned to produce "stuff", and that it is purely accidental that humans are just one kind of "stuff" that happens to get produced. I'm actually not aware of any fine-tuning argument that is based on making humans as such. The closest you get is fine-tuning needed to get the kind of chemistry that is required to build life as we know it.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I don't see why speculation about whether those "constants" could be different makes any more sense than speculation about whether 2+2 could ever equal other than 4. I mean sure, you can do any common mathematical formula you like while assuming that 2+2=5 and you'll come out with some crazy results, but that doesn't mean that 2+2=5 was ever actually a mathematical possibility.

If you take another look at Newton's law of gravity I mentioned in my previous post: you see nothing remarkable in me putting whatever appropriate number for say m1 (the mass of the first object), right? That's just me applying the law to the concrete situation at hand. If I apply it to an apple falling to the earth, I use the mass of the apple for "m1", if I apply it to a whale falling to the earth, I use the mass of the whale for "m1". These will be wildly different numbers, but I'm justified in changing them because they represent what is the case. But mathematically, the "G" I put there in the law is no different from "m1". It just is another number that gets multiplied. Nothing goes wrong with the maths just because I change that number. And physically, changing "G" has a clear meaning. It means making gravity stronger and weaker. There is nothing physically absurd as such about changing that number. After all, we had to measure it, and before we did, it could have been any number really. Now, the following is the logic employed here: Let's take this entire universe as what is the case. Then all the various numbers that one could put in for "m1" become a kind of blur, since there are many different objects of many different masses in the universe. But "G" is not blurry. Since it is a natural constant, it always has one value, and so considered across the entire universe this one value characterises what is the case (together with many other such values in other laws). While I can in fact only see this case, this universe, being sort of stuck in it, nothing in maths or physics stops me from considering other possible cases that arise from varying these values. Indeed, since my maths and physics is rather good, I can even say quite a bit about what these other cases would be like. To my great surprise I find that practically all other cases, all other universes, do not contain the sort of features that would be required to sustain something like me. This seems odd. Why? Because nothing in maths and physics (as I know them) says that the number I am plugging in for the actual case (our universe) are somehow more privileged than any other numbers I might plug in (to calculate hypothetical other universes). Yet the outcome is extraordinary. This is different form the case of varying "m1", where apple and whale pretty much did the same thing: falling to earth. That seems to demand some kind of explanation, and that explanation does not seem to be present in the known laws themselves.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

There is no particular reason why this reality, that we see around us at this moment, is not a construct. You could certainly never prove it is not, not from within. I have no difficulty with this. Human beings made the movie The Matrix; God could easily create it in the real.

If you delve into the latest in physics (which I am only able to do in popularizations) there is a lot of discussion about alternate universes. If there are such things, the number of them is infinite. I have no problems believing an infinite God could handle this.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Ey up Alan.

Bet a buck.

The multiverse is infinite and eternal. No God is necessary. If there is a God with a multiverse in Him, it heterodoxly defines Him from eternity. Unless He's trans-eternal, trans-infinite. Which is meaningless. If you're saying that a multiverse is just a finite set of universes, then yes, there's no difference.

As for life being rare and unrecognizable, as soon as it rained here, there was life. Average life. If life is materially emergent, it is everywhere, including in extreme, unrecognizable forms.

(Talking of rain, does God know if it's going to tomorrow?)

There is no therefore about life evolving from non-life just because on this unique world we see the one then the other. Non-trace oxygen elsewhere would be biogenic. It would be absolute proof that life isn't just materialistically logical, it is materialistic period.

Uniformitarianism would apply in a universe teeming with life. Therefore heterodoxly with Christs. We could not possibly be special. Even in a single and therefore fine-tuned universe.

Orthodoxy would be meaningless.

If the universe is random in its 26 known dimensionless physical constants, it is part of an infinite, eternal, ineffable, meaningless, Godless multiverse.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The difference is that one can deduce 2 plus 2 = 4 from mathematical first principles. One cannot deduce the value of the cosmological constant or the gravitational constant from first principles.
They are universal first principles. They may not be as simple as 2+2=4, but in terms of what they are there's little difference.

Are you putting forward an argument or a statement of belief?
Because just at the moment we can, say, calculate the value of pi using no empirical data whatsoever. We don't know how to do that for any of the fundamental constants. That suggests that the difference between the two is really rather large.

quote:

quote:
The basis of the fine-tuning argument is that one could deduce the gravitational and cosmological constants to a very high degree of accuracy if one's first principles were the relative physical laws and the fact that the universe has life in it.
Only because if the universe didn't have life in it there wouldn't be anyone to do the deduction.

It looks more like it ought to be something like Tony Blair's height, or the height of Everest.
If the human race didn't exist we wouldn't be able to calculate Tony Blair's height. But from the fact of the relevant physical laws we cannot calculate Tony Blair's height.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: (Talking of rain, does God know if it's going to tomorrow?)

Yes. He knows that where I live, it will rain tomorrow at exactly 3.30pm.

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
This is the most horrendous torture to any scientist, the universe as the ultimate outlier, the mother of all pattern breaks. It's like a neo sign flashing "Explain me. Now." with a trillion watts. Terrifying screams of "But whhhhhyyyyyy?????" would be echoing around physics departments all over the world, were it not that physics is suffering from sever post-traumatic stress disorder over this and does a really good job at displacing the horror and concentrating on smaller things.

Don't you think you're rather exaggerating here? It's an interesting puzzle, to be sure, but it seems a bit much to say that physicists who aren't obsessed by it must be suffering from some mental disorder. Can't they be obsessed by, say, the nature of dark matter or dark energy, and still be good, non-self-deluding physicists?

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I think the fine-tuning argument gets the whole thing backwards. The universe isn't fine-tuned to us, we are fine-tuned to it.

If anything had been different, maybe a completely different form of life would have emerged. Maybe no life would have emerged. I simply don't understand why so many people take it as axiomatic that life as we know it had to evolve, and therefore the universe had to have been set up in exactly the right way for it to happen. We're just not that important.

There's a logical leap here which gets made by both sides. Believing that the universe was deliberately set up in a way that produced us (or aliens, or whatever) does not equal being important. The earthworm could hold the same belief. So could E coli. And none of them would be arrogant simply for saying so. They might be arrogant, of course; but there's no way of knowing based solely on the position.

I think I'm being incoherent. Damn. Let me try again.

Suppose for the sake of argument that God DID fine tune the universe in such a way that it produced humanity. It does NOT follow that humanity is wonderful, or awesome, or the cat's pajamas. The only thing we can conclude is that God evidently intended to produce humanity (along with a screaming multitude of a zillion other things, including mosquitoes and interstellar dust).

So it really doesn't matter whether we're important or unimportant. Things can be fine tuned or not either way.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

In fact, God fine-tuned the universe to produce cherry flan. He simply can't resist that.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I have trouble with the fine tuning argument. Most of the universe seems jury-rigged at best. I'd suggest "Wonderful Life" by Stephen Jay Gould which goes after a number of our assumptions within a detailed but accessible evolutionary perspective. From vestibular ossicles, tits on men to misplaced clitori (shouldn't clits be inside the vagina?), the argument of co-opted parts to later serve other functions makes it rather obvious that there is no grand design in biology.

I have trouble with this argument because people keep popping up to tell us that hey, that so-called junk DNA actually DOES serve a purpose, we didn't realize it before; the appendix has a useful function in resetting gut bacteria after a catastrophic wipe-out; and so on, and so on...

It's almost perverse. I'd really hesitate to say anything was jury-rigged for fear of having to eat my words tomorrow.

(and there's a darn good reason for not putting the clitoris inside the vagina. It's called big-headed babies on the way out. OUCHouchOUCHouchOUCH)

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Don't you think you're rather exaggerating here?

Uhhmm, yes, I was exaggerating massively for comic effect.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I have trouble with this argument because people keep popping up to tell us that hey, that so-called junk DNA actually DOES serve a purpose, we didn't realize it before; . . .

This would be surprising only to someone who equated all non-coding DNA with pseudogenes, an impression you could easily get from the popular media but not from scientists.

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Don't you think you're rather exaggerating here?
Uhhmm, yes, I was exaggerating massively for comic effect.

Yes, I thought I detected some humorous notes. Is this also a massive exaggeration?

quote:
In terms of philosophy, I would say that they have take a (near) infinite heap of bullshit and shoved it to a place where they do not care. It's such a blatant intellectual placebo that if would be hilarious if people weren't so serious about it all.

After all, "blatant intellectual placebo" seems like a term lots of people could use for lots of positions they don't happen to subscribe to.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Yes, I thought I detected some humorous notes. Is this also a massive exaggeration?

quote:
In terms of philosophy, I would say that they have take a (near) infinite heap of bullshit and shoved it to a place where they do not care. It's such a blatant intellectual placebo that if would be hilarious if people weren't so serious about it all.
After all, "blatant intellectual placebo" seems like a term lots of people could use for lots of positions they don't happen to subscribe to.

The next paragraph starts with this "I will admit to being overly unkind, indeed polemical, in my assessment there. Actually, ..." and proceeds to deliver a more balanced assessment. Though I would say that there are quite a number of people who deserve the polemics. However, they are typically not cosmologists actually working on/with the multiverse...

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I have trouble with this argument because people keep popping up to tell us that hey, that so-called junk DNA actually DOES serve a purpose, we didn't realize it before; . . .
This would be surprising only to someone who equated all non-coding DNA with pseudogenes, an impression you could easily get from the popular media but not from scientists.

Fine, nitpick the example. The principle remains.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
But, answering "why is the sky blue?" leads to knowledge of things like Raleigh scattering, which in turn allows us to predict the colour of the sky on other planets with different atmospheric compositions, densities etc.

If anyone feels like investigating what makes a given "constant" what it is then fine. No problems here. Let's discover all sorts of new and wonderful things about the universe in which we live!

What gets me is when people start talking about "fine tuning" as if those constants could have been different, like some creator at the start of time had to set all the parameters to the right numbers or else nothing would work. I mean, nobody talks about "2+2=4" as if the value of "2" could have been different such that 2+2 would equal 5, or talks about "2" being "fine-tuned" so that 2+2 always equals 4.

Posted by Green Mario (# 18090) on :

I think though the logic of mathematics is considered more fundamental than the constants in the physics equations that govern the universe. Fine tuning isn't something just proposed by theists, many athiest scientists speculate about many universes with different constants precisely because they are bothered by fine tuning, eg Martin Rees in his book "just six numbers"

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
If one day we found a weird physical object in space, let's call it an arbitron for the sake of definiteness, and upon close examination concluded that an arbitron can only exist if the electromagnetic coupling has the value it actually has up to 20 digits of accuracy, then we do have a fine-tuning problem there.

I don't see it. The electromagnetic coupling is what it is, and the arbitron is the way it is because it fits that value. The electromagnetic coupling wasn't set to that value so that the arbitron could exist, and therefore saying it is "fine-tuned" to the arbitron is inaccurate.

quote:
The fine tuning of the cosmological constant, for example, is not needed just to produce humans, or life. It is needed to produce, well, anything somehow differentiated, like say stars and galaxies. For the wrong values you either get a rapidly thinning out "gas" turning into nothingness or a rapidly compressing "gas" turning into a reverse Big Bang.

Sure. And for the wrong value of "2", 2+2=/=4.
That doesn't mean "2" actually could have had a different value.

quote:
But mathematically, the "G" I put there in the law is no different from "m1". It just is another number that gets multiplied.

Mathematically, you're absolutely right. But this isn't just an arbitrary maths problem, maths is merely the 'language' we're using to describe what's actually happening.

quote:
After all, we had to measure it, and before we did, it could have been any number really.

False. It was always what it was, even before life existed in the universe. Us finally developing a way to measure it didn't change anything about gravity itself.

quote:
While I can in fact only see this case, this universe, being sort of stuck in it, nothing in maths or physics stops me from considering other possible cases that arise from varying these values.

Of course not. But that doesn't mean those variations could ever have actually happened, any more than 2+2 could ever fail to equal 4 (a truth that remains even if, for the sake of speculation, you redefine "2" as "2.5" and see what happens to the maths).

quote:
Indeed, since my maths and physics is rather good, I can even say quite a bit about what these other cases would be like. To my great surprise I find that practically all other cases, all other universes, do not contain the sort of features that would be required to sustain something like me. This seems odd.

Actually, it seems perfectly logical. Just like, if you redefine "2" with a value of 2.5 (or, indeed, anything other than 2) then "2+2" will no longer equal 4.

quote:
Because nothing in maths and physics (as I know them) says that the number I am plugging in for the actual case (our universe) are somehow more privileged than any other numbers I might plug in (to calculate hypothetical other universes).

The numbers themselves aren't "more privileged", but that's because the numbers themselves aren't what's actually causing the universe to be the way it is. They're just our way of trying to understand it. Maths (and physics, for that matter) don't cause the universe, they describe it.

Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :

The Recursive Anthropic Principle states that the universe is such that the Recursive Anthropic Principle can be stated.

But since the Recursive Anthropic Principle has been stated and is obviously true, then the stronger form: the Recursive Anthropic Principle states that the universe must be such that the Recursive Anthropic Principle can be stated, must be true.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
I think though the logic of mathematics is considered more fundamental than the constants in the physics equations that govern the universe.

I don't see why.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
The multiverse is infinite and eternal.

Is it? Some conjectural multiverses are infinite and eternal, other conjectural multiverses are finite (though still very very large) with a beginning. But, let's just stick for the moment with your definition of the multiverse as infinite and eternal ...

quote:
No God is necessary.

Necessary for what? Necessary in what sense? One could reasonably argue that even if all of physical existance was confined to just a single universe (this one) then God would still not be necessary. We don't need God to explain the development of the universe, there is no point within the 14 billion years or so this universe has existed where anything has happened that requires God as the explanation. If God is necessary then atheism is illogical and faith in God meaningless.

Gods existance does not require Him to be necessary.

Posted by Green Mario (# 18090) on :

A universe where adding two objects to another two objects caused a fifth object to sspring into existence would be far more different (and I think harder to conceive as possessible) than one in which the gravitational constant was different, or even a universe with four spatial dimensions rather than three.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

Marvin, your constant reference to 2+2=4 is basically bullshit. Mathematic is a definition game. The reason 2+2=4 is because of definitions that were made first. If you change these definitions, then 2+2=4 becomes false. For example, if you operate in a base of three instead of ten, then 2+2=11. Or if you define the integer numbers labels as such: ..., -7, -6, -5, -1, -3, -2, -4, 0, 4, 2, 3, 1, 5, 6, 7, ... then 2+2=1. Etc.

This fundamental arbitrariness of mathematics exactly supports my point. For example, let's say we ask what the angles within a triangle sum up to. You probably want to say 180 degrees, but that basically requires a flat (Euclidean) geometry. If it is a concave geometry, then it will be larger than 180 degrees, if it is a convex geometry, then it will be less than 180 degrees. Now if we apply maths to the universe, we will find that the angles of a triangle sum up to something. (In fact, they will sum up differently in different locations, but for the sake of argument let's assume that we are in a universe with a single geometry.) It is precisely mathematics then which suggests that it could have been otherwise. Because we know that we can just as well have those angles add up differently, as far as the maths goes. It is because we see that we make an explicit choice in fixing the maths, that we think of the universe being the result of a choice, and that we wonder why it is this choice and not another.

Likewise, my previous argument precisely centred around a mathematical formula which allowed a choice, mathematically speaking, namely what to put for "G". Etc. Mathematics is not your friend here. Mathematics is not about brute facts at all. Maths is about the most logically pure set of choices that is coherently thinkable for human beings. It is precisely because scientists found that maths applies incredibly well to the universe that we are now thinking that brute facts are not really enough of an answer.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

I was thinking of this thread while I was out on the ocean last night.

If the laws of physics made it so that normal waves were twice the height that they currently are I would have had a rough go. It would also make it hard to enjoy a beach vacation!

I am grateful for the laws of physics the way they are. [Angel]

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Yes, I thought I detected some humorous notes. Is this also a massive exaggeration?

quote:
In terms of philosophy, I would say that they have take a (near) infinite heap of bullshit and shoved it to a place where they do not care. It's such a blatant intellectual placebo that if would be hilarious if people weren't so serious about it all.
After all, "blatant intellectual placebo" seems like a term lots of people could use for lots of positions they don't happen to subscribe to.
The next paragraph starts with this "I will admit to being overly unkind, indeed polemical, in my assessment there. Actually, ..." and proceeds to deliver a more balanced assessment. Though I would say that there are quite a number of people who deserve the polemics. However, they are typically not cosmologists actually working on/with the multiverse...

I saw that previous admission, too; but the referent of "they" in your polemic was "many physicists", and I'm still not sure exactly who it's directed at. I'd be interested in knowing your (non-polemicized) estimate of the extent and significance of the problem among physicists.

Marvin - One of the reasons for pondering the values of measured physical constants (and not simply saying "they are what they are") might be that there's a history of finding telling relationships between what seemed to be independent constants.

For example, the speed of light is a famous physical constant of interest; and the vacuum permittivity and the magnetic permeability of free space are kind of like the "gravitational constants" of electricity and magnetism, respectively. Each of these constants can be (and were) separately measured, and one might have simply said "they are what they are", until it was realized that electricity and magnetism are not actually separate phenomena, and in fact the speed of light is the square root of the product of the other two constants. So the three values can't actually be independent, and it would have been a mistake to simply accept them as "they are what they are."

[Note: I'm not claiming the numerical connection led to the physical insight; but it could suggest a reason for the current interest in otherwise seemingly arbitrary constants. Perhaps IngoB will be kind enough to point out any glaring blunders I've made (IANAP - I am not a physicist.)]

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
One could reasonably argue that even if all of physical existance was confined to just a single universe (this one) then God would still not be necessary.

So God is not by definition at least "creator of all that is"?

quote:
We don't need God to explain the development of the universe

No, but that a universe has developed allows us to refer to its "creator and sustainer" as God. You seem to be thinking of "the universe" as some kind of blob that has morphed its way from nothing to now, ignoring the significance of time. Without time there would be no universe, and without God's ongoing recreation of now there would be no time.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It is because we see that we make an explicit choice in fixing the maths, that we think of the universe being the result of a choice, and that we wonder why it is this choice and not another.

That's where you and I differ. I simply do not agree that just because we can conceive of different values for universal constants, there must therefore have been a choice that was made in order to set those values in the first place. Universal constants are not a proof of God.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Marvin - One of the reasons for pondering the values of measured physical constants (and not simply saying "they are what they are") might be that there's a history of finding telling relationships between what seemed to be independent constants.

I agree. But that's different to what's being put forward on this thread, which is essentially "these constants had to be what they are or we wouldn't exist, therefore someone must have decided they would be that in order that we would exist, therefore God".

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
One could reasonably argue that even if all of physical existance was confined to just a single universe (this one) then God would still not be necessary.
So God is not by definition at least "creator of all that is"?

quote:
We don't need God to explain the development of the universe
No, but that a universe has developed allows us to refer to its "creator and sustainer" as God. You seem to be thinking of "the universe" as some kind of blob that has morphed its way from nothing to now, ignoring the significance of time. Without time there would be no universe, and without God's ongoing recreation of now there would be no time.

Theologically, I agree with you.

Scientifically, we have no need of that hypothesis.

Theologically, the "fine tuning" of the universe is not a problem, indeed it's what we expect of a creation where the intent of the Creator is to create intelligent life.

Scientifically, the "fine tuning" of the universe is a remarkable thing. Therefore, I was coming to this thread with my scientist hat on.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
I think though the logic of mathematics is considered more fundamental than the constants in the physics equations that govern the universe.
I don't see why.

The late Martin Gardner, popular science writer and atheist, once edited a collection of science writing. He included, in order to illustrate exactly this point, a piece of Christian apologetics.
It is perhaps possible to link to The Ethics of Elfland too often. But I doubt it.

quote:
There are certain sequences or developments (cases of one thing following another), which are, in the true sense of the word, reasonable. They are, in the true sense of the word, necessary. Such are mathematical and merely logical sequences. We in fairyland (who are the most reasonable of all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity. For instance, if the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, it is (in an iron and awful sense) NECESSARY that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters. There is no getting out of it. Haeckel may talk as much fatalism about that fact as he pleases: it really must be. If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne: and we in fairyland submit.
...
I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened—dawn and death and so on—as if THEY were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as NECESSARY as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination. You cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail.

Cold reason dictates from her eternal throne that 2*2=2+2. Cold reason dictates the value of pi. But as far as we know cold reason has no opinion either way upon the value of the speed of light or the gravitational constant. To such things, to the best of our knowledge, she is magnificently indifferent.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

So because we can imagine something being different, someone or something must have decided to make it what it actually is?

You'll forgive me if I don't find that reasoning compelling.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

If the multiverse is finite, yeah, as already discussed. God could've done that in His original Shazzan! Materialism couldn't.

If this finite universe is all there is, then yer 'avin a giraffe. It's special. Purposed. There is a God without doubt. That the 26+ apparently arbitrary dimensionless constants should once be anthropic for all time isn't reasonable at all. God may have made a finite multiverse and in its mitosis here we are by chance, but postulating a finite multiverse requires God, unless there is a meta-multiverse in which related multiverses come and go. Ad infinitum.

And of course you're right SINCE the creation 13.7 Ga ago, apart possibly - but by NO means certainly - from life and mind, no divine intervention is necessary at all. Find ET non-trace oxygen and intervention wasn't necessary for life and vastlier probablier therefore mind.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Scientifically, the "fine tuning" of the universe is a remarkable thing. Therefore, I was coming to this thread with my scientist hat on.

So does science explain the phenomenon of time in the development of the universe, or does it merely account for time? If the latter, doesn't a "cause for time" (that some of us happen to refer to as God) become a necessary component of a comprehensive model, in addition to the physical "laws of nature"?

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
That the 26+ apparently arbitrary dimensionless constants should once be anthropic for all time isn't reasonable at all.

Why not?

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Because.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
I saw that previous admission, too; but the referent of "they" in your polemic was "many physicists", and I'm still not sure exactly who it's directed at. I'd be interested in knowing your (non-polemicized) estimate of the extent and significance of the problem among physicists.

I do not know. I never worked in cosmology, and I now work in neuroscience where people have other problems. But when one sees famous and famously atheist physicists like Steven Weinberg work diligently at a problem that may give God a foothold in physics, then I think one can validly suspect motivations beyond pure scientific interest. (And yes, that cuts both ways. Quite probably there are some faithful scientist working on this in the hope to find a connection to God.)

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
That's where you and I differ. I simply do not agree that just because we can conceive of different values for universal constants, there must therefore have been a choice that was made in order to set those values in the first place. Universal constants are not a proof of God.

Rather obviously the fine-tuning of natural constants is not a straight proof of God, given that some explain it with the multiverse. Others might expect that a future TOE (theory of everything) does not have any natural constants, and that we are merely parametrising our lack of understanding.

As far as I can tell, you are denying ferociously here that the fine-tuning of natural constants is interesting and should be explained, because you have an unholy fear that somebody might offer the fairly obvious explanation "God fine-tuned those constants". But that is just plain silly.

Maybe God fine-tuned these constants. Maybe one of the alternative explanations holds. Scientists however typically find these findings both interesting and as demanding some kind of explanation. Them's the breaks.

Posted by FCB (# 1495) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
So because we can imagine something being different, someone or something must have decided to make it what it actually is?

I think you're leaping from a piece of the argument to the conclusion. If I read Dafyd correctly, he is only (at this point) arguing that the rules of mathematics are different from cosmic "rules" like the speed of light. Given certain conventions (like operating in base ten), we need make no empirical investigation to know that 2+2=4 necessarily. However, apart from empirical investigation we have no reason to think that the speed of light is what it is. This suggests that the necessity attached to the speed of light (or any other cosmic "rule") is something quite different from the necessity attached to 2+2=4.

This in no way proves the anthropic principle. But it would seem to be something that has to be true if the anthropic principle is to be true.

PS
I was almost ready to give up reading SoF, and then an interesting discussion like this one comes along...

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

It is far more easy to deal with these things in fiction.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Scientifically, the "fine tuning" of the universe is a remarkable thing. Therefore, I was coming to this thread with my scientist hat on.
So does science explain the phenomenon of time in the development of the universe, or does it merely account for time?

At present, I am unaware of any scientific explanation for the phenomenon of time in the development of the universe.

quote:
If the latter, doesn't a "cause for time" (that some of us happen to refer to as God) become a necessary component of a comprehensive model, in addition to the physical "laws of nature"?

Yes, a comprehensive model would need to include a cause for space-time.

Refering to the "cause for time" as God raises all sorts of issues with me. Perhaps it's because God as the first cause seems like a God of the Gaps, with just one gap (that first cause). Such thinking, like all God of the Gaps views, can also run into the danger of mistakenly assuming that something with a scientific explanation can't also be the action of God. A scientific explanation and "God did it" are not mutually exclusive.

Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Marvin - One of the reasons for pondering the values of measured physical constants (and not simply saying "they are what they are") might be that there's a history of finding telling relationships between what seemed to be independent constants.
I agree. But that's different to what's being put forward on this thread, which is essentially "these constants had to be what they are or we wouldn't exist, therefore someone must have decided they would be that in order that we would exist, therefore God".

I think I'm thinking on similar lines.

If the observable universe is in fact a Matrix-like simulation, I could understand how the programmers could have used a different number for G in their coding. Gravity would then be different, and that would have consequences. And I can see that there must be a relatively narrow range of gravities suitable for life.

Similarly, if there is actually a God, I can see that he could actually have made any of those potentially programmable universes, and again, outside of a certain range life (and other sorts of complexity) would not be expected to occur.

However if I suppose that there isn't a programmer, and isn't a God, or any other sort of volitional agent who set the universe's parameters, I'm not sure what it means to say that they could have been different. How so? If the universe is all there is, what process within the universe sets its physical laws? What would you need to change to get a different value for G? It is, of course, highly convenient that the universe does permit life, but there would be no particular reason to suppose that it either could or could not have been otherwise, since this universe is the only one that we can see.

If we assume that some great cosmic die was rolled at the Big Bang for the universe's Gravity characteristic, another for the Speed of Light, and so on for all the physical constants we can discover, then all those dice turning up in a way that permits life may be a major coincidence, or, perhaps, so much of a coincidence that we'd have to call in a miracle. My problem is that I'm not sure where we're keeping those dice, whether there was ever a process that set all those values to the ones we have, which might have been different. Without that, fine-tuning seems to me to be a speculative argument for God (though not a completely worthless or erroneous one).

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Refering to the "cause for time" as God raises all sorts of issues with me. Perhaps it's because God as the first cause seems like a God of the Gaps, with just one gap (that first cause).

I wasn't thinking that "cause for time" alone was an adequate definition of God. But I think it is fair to say that God in the Christian tradition never means less than first cause. If God were not the first cause, other more philosophically-derived properties (eg. omnipotence) that tradition likes to append would make no sense.

quote:
Such thinking, like all God of the Gaps views, can also run into the danger of mistakenly assuming that something with a scientific explanation can't also be the action of God. A scientific explanation and "God did it" are not mutually exclusive.

I agree they're not mutually exclusive. But how many people seriously think they are? My impression is that a more common problem is ignoring/forgetting that "God did it" applies to our very existence and every feature of our experience. God gets relegated to an other-worldly presence to worship or call on for assistance, rather than acknowledged as a foundational feature of reality.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
So because we can imagine something being different, someone or something must have decided to make it what it actually is?

You'll forgive me if I don't find that reasoning compelling.

I think the argument is unsatisfactory for reasons I gave in my first post. But it is an interesting unsatisfactory argument rather than a dull unsatisfactory argument.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Marvin the Martian: So because we can imagine something being different, someone or something must have decided to make it what it actually is?

Maybe not, but it does beg the question.

Things fall down when I let go of them. I can imagine them staying up. Why do they fall down? That's a reasonable question. Science has an answer to it.

The sky is blue. I can imagine it being green. Why is it blue? That's a reasonable question. Science has an answer to it.

The Universe is such that life is possible. I can imagine this not being the case. Why is it such thal life is possible? That's a reasonable question.

Posted by Pre-cambrian (# 2055) on :

It is a reasonable question. But following your two previous questions it may well turn out that in due course Science will have an answer to this one too. Certainly there should not be an assumption that in this particular case God did it instead.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Pre-cambrian: It is a reasonable question. But following your two previous questions it may well turn out that in due course Science will have an answer to this one too. Certainly there should not be an assumption that in this particular case God did it instead.

Thanks for agreeing that it's reasonable. FWIW, I'm not claiming this to be proof that God did it.

(But I would like to receive a dime every time someone on the Ship told me "Science will find an answer to this eventually". A statement of faith if I ever saw one.)

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
I saw that previous admission, too; but the referent of "they" in your polemic was "many physicists", and I'm still not sure exactly who it's directed at. I'd be interested in knowing your (non-polemicized) estimate of the extent and significance of the problem among physicists.
I do not know. I never worked in cosmology, and I now work in neuroscience where people have other problems. But when one sees famous and famously atheist physicists like Steven Weinberg work diligently at a problem that may give God a foothold in physics, then I think one can validly suspect motivations beyond pure scientific interest.

Now I'm really confused. You suspect he has non-scientific motives for studying a problem that you yourself emphatically say is "interesting and should be explained"? I don't follow the reasoning, especially when you then say this to Marvin:

quote:
As far as I can tell, you are denying ferociously here that the fine-tuning of natural constants is interesting and should be explained, because you have an unholy fear that somebody might offer the fairly obvious explanation "God fine-tuned those constants". But that is just plain silly.

Maybe God fine-tuned these constants. Maybe one of the alternative explanations holds. Scientists however typically find these findings both interesting and as demanding some kind of explanation. Them's the breaks.

So Marvin's displaying an unscientific attitude by dismissing these findings, and you suspect Weinberg of an unscientific attitude because he's working diligently on the problem? You're a hard man to satisfy, IngoB.

Marvin -

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Marvin - One of the reasons for pondering the values of measured physical constants (and not simply saying "they are what they are") might be that there's a history of finding telling relationships between what seemed to be independent constants.
I agree. But that's different to what's being put forward on this thread, which is essentially "these constants had to be what they are or we wouldn't exist, therefore someone must have decided they would be that in order that we would exist, therefore God".

I don't think it's a very compelling argument for God, either - I'm just suggesting a reason why physicists can reasonably find the study of these constants a lot more interesting than "2+2=4", or "brute facts" meriting little more than a shrug or two (which is what I took your position to be, at least when I posted.)

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The late Martin Gardner
If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack.

Tsk. So sexist.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by The late Martin Gardner
If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack.
Tsk. So sexist.

That's Chesterton. Martin Gardner extracted it from Chesterton's book Orthodoxy and put it in a book of science writing.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Now I'm really confused. You suspect he has non-scientific motives for studying a problem that you yourself emphatically say is "interesting and should be explained"? ... So Marvin's displaying an unscientific attitude by dismissing these findings, and you suspect Weinberg of an unscientific attitude because he's working diligently on the problem? You're a hard man to satisfy, IngoB.

I also suspect that you have some ulterior motives in going on about what I may or may not think of other physicists. Motivation guessing is a vague and occasionally nasty business, but just because it can't be argue with Spock-like clarity does not mean that it cannot be right on the money...

Anyway, I think that appeals to the multiverse and/or anthropic principle amount to importing philosophy into physics without having to pay the price of facing alternative philosophies (in particular theist ones) fair and square in the arena of metaphysics and perhaps epistemology. The only "philosophy free" physics alternative is IMHO to assume that the fine-tuning of natural constants will be resolved eventually by new physics, which expressed in old physics results in the fine-tuning of natural constants. Incidentally, this is what I think will be the case, i.e., I do not believe that fine-tuning is where God is showing in physics. At least not in the current version of physics. (If we have a TOE one day, with one "natural constant", and that is terribly fine-tuned, then I will re-think that.)

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
(If we have a TOE one day, with one "natural constant", and that is terribly fine-tuned, then I will re-think that.)

Surely, if we ever discover such a thing then by its very nature it will be "terribly fine-tuned", in that it will be a specific value and not any other.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

The evidence so far is that as we gain more understanding of the different fields, forces, particles etc that we experience in everyday life then we tend towards being able to describe them in terms of increasingly fewer entities. Thousands of different nuclei are described as different arrangements of two particles, protons and neutrons. Electricity and magnetism are described in a single theory of electro-magnetism. And so on. At present the evidence is that scientific progress will eventually develop theories that successfully integrate other currently seperate theories, and in the process further reduce the number of aparently arbitrary parameters. Whether that removes the question of "fine tuning", or just leaves us with one parameter that is "fine tuned" we will have to wait and see. I don't expect us to know that answer in my lifetime, however.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Surely, if we ever discover such a thing then by its very nature it will be "terribly fine-tuned", in that it will be a specific value and not any other.

You really don't get this stuff, do you?

Let us say that the ultimate, final and last natural constant of the Grandest TOE of them all is measured to be

kappa = 42.0000000000000000000 +/- 0.0000000000000000005

Now, if we find that life as we know it could conceivably exist for most values in the range of

30 < kappa < 50

then nobody will bat an eyelid. But if the range instead happens to be

41.9999999999999999999 < kappa < 42.0000000000000000001

then scientists will wonder why this parameter is apparently fine-tuned for life - or at least: for life-supporting stuff.

And if this is the mother of all TOEs, the TOE of TOEs, the TOE to end all TOEs, then that just might be evidence of God. Or the multiverse. Or something beyond the physical laws of our universe...

Posted by Green Mario (# 18090) on :

Wouldn't we have to have some idea what range Kappa could be in within a valid universe. Life being possible in the range 30 - 50 would not be impressive from a fine tuning perspective if we think for any universe kappa should be between 0 and 100, if we think kappa could range from -1000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 in a theoretically possible universe this might still look like fine tuning.

Posted by Green Mario (# 18090) on :

For instance I think when the fine tuning of the strength of the force of gravity vs the force of electromagnetism is talked about it isn't that literally changing the relative strength of the force of gravity vs electromagnetism by 1% would make much difference - its the fact that changing their relative strengths 10,000 fold would make a big difference to the type of stars that might be formed (with implications for whether life was possible) and yet there seems no a priori reason why gravity should be 10^36 times weaker than the electro magnetic force rather than the same strength or perhaps just 10^30 times weaker.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

Green Mario, I think the only real reference point in this is the number itself. Otherwise we have to define what sort of change is "acceptable though life-destroying" as opposed to "unacceptable (and also life destroying)". To put it differently, in general the potential range of any "natural constant" can be imagined from -infinity to +infinity. There is nothing for example that stops me from setting "G" in Newton's law of gravity to a billion times its current value, or to negative its current value. I do not see how we can classify the resulting universes as less "acceptable" than the one obtained from raising "G" by one percent.

What one can do is to compare the value itself to its range. If kappa=42, then the range
30 < kappa < 50
corresponds to a 20-30% change of kappa. Whereas the range
41.9999999999999999999 < kappa < 42.0000000000000000001
corresponds to a 2-3*10^-19% change in kappa. That's about a hundred quintillion smaller change. Clearly, that's a much more restricted range. If kappa is not allowed to move from its current value more than that before the universe becomes hostile to life, then we can call that fine-tuned. And this statement requires nothing but knowledge of the measured value of the constant.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

(I agree with IngoB.)

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Now I'm really confused. You suspect he has non-scientific motives for studying a problem that you yourself emphatically say is "interesting and should be explained"? ... So Marvin's displaying an unscientific attitude by dismissing these findings, and you suspect Weinberg of an unscientific attitude because he's working diligently on the problem? You're a hard man to satisfy, IngoB.
I also suspect that you have some ulterior motives in going on about what I may or may not think of other physicists.

Well, you brought it up. A couple of times. With exuberant polemic! Which is fine, but bound to draw some attention.

quote:
Motivation guessing is a vague and occasionally nasty business, but just because it can't be argue with Spock-like clarity does not mean that it cannot be right on the money...

As your two expressed positions seem contradictory to me, I think up to this point (i.e. before your very next paragraph) you haven't argued the case for motivation with any clarity at all. Or rather, you've made two more-or-less clear arguments which are mutually contradictory.

But then...

quote:
Anyway, I think that appeals to the multiverse and/or anthropic principle amount to importing philosophy into physics without having to pay the price of facing alternative philosophies (in particular theist ones) fair and square in the arena of metaphysics and perhaps epistemology. The only "philosophy free" physics alternative is IMHO to assume that the fine-tuning of natural constants will be resolved eventually by new physics, which expressed in old physics results in the fine-tuning of natural constants. Incidentally, this is what I think will be the case, i.e., I do not believe that fine-tuning is where God is showing in physics. At least not in the current version of physics. (If we have a TOE one day, with one "natural constant", and that is terribly fine-tuned, then I will re-think that.)

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense to me and is quite helpful.

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