|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: A fine tuned universe - a cosmic question
|
LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
|
Posted
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?
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
|
Posted
In fact, God fine-tuned the universe to produce cherry flan. He simply can't resist that.
--------------------
I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
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)
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Don't you think you're rather exaggerating here?
Uhhmm, yes, I was exaggerating massively for comic effect.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
|
Posted
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.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
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...
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Green Mario
Shipmate
# 18090
|
Posted
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"
Posts: 121 | Registered: Apr 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Refraction Villanelles
Posts: 464 | From: Southern England | Registered: Jul 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Green Mario
Shipmate
# 18090
|
Posted
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.
Posts: 121 | Registered: Apr 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
|
Posted
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]](graemlins/angel.gif)
--------------------
"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
|
Posted
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.)]
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dave Marshall
Shipmate
# 7533
|
Posted
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.
Posts: 4763 | From: Derbyshire Dales | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
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".
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dave Marshall
Shipmate
# 7533
|
Posted
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"?
Posts: 4763 | From: Derbyshire Dales | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
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?
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
|
Posted
Because.
--------------------
Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
FCB
Hillbilly Thomist
# 1495
|
Posted
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...
--------------------
Agent of the Inquisition since 1982.
Posts: 2928 | From: that city in "The Wire" | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
|
Posted
It is far more easy to deal with these things in fiction.
--------------------
Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
|
Posted
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).
--------------------
"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dave Marshall
Shipmate
# 7533
|
Posted
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.
Posts: 4763 | From: Derbyshire Dales | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
Posts: 2314 | From: Croydon | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
|
Posted
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.)
--------------------
I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
|
Posted
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.)
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
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.)
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
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...
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Green Mario
Shipmate
# 18090
|
Posted
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.
Posts: 121 | Registered: Apr 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Green Mario
Shipmate
# 18090
|
Posted
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.
Posts: 121 | Registered: Apr 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
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.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
