The Anthropic Principle

“As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.” -Freeman Dyson

Is this true iyo? One is certainly struck by all the seeming accomodations that have been made for our entrance into this universe. Just today it occurred to me how "fortunate" it is we have this atmospheric skin around our planet that burns up most meteors before they strike earth. Then again, if we DIDN'T have this protection would we even be here to marvel about it? I'm not suggesting anything so daft as creationism here. I'm content only to rule out the nagging possiibility that we are embedded inside some kind of Matrix that was put together for us by..well who knows?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

 

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I don't think that means what you think it means. Just the opposite. It explains why conditions on Earth are so suitable for life. It's because if it weren't suitable (like most of the rest of the universe) we wouldn't be here to observe it.

 

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You're right. The weak AP takes that position whereas the strong AP asserts that consciousness was somehow a necessary outcome of the Universe. What I'm referring to is the problem AP attempts to explain: the seeming fine-tunedness of various cosmic parameters for the later emergence of conscious lifeforms.

 

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I'm convinced the fine-tuning concept is a myth.

 

I think a truer way to see it is that there were as many universes as it took until chance enabled one to come about that we could evolve somewhere inside of.

 

"...Some proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why the Universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, they believe it is unremarkable that the universe's fundamental constants happen to fall within the narrow range thought to be compatible with life...."

Well, yes, a burned forest needs a condition for fire. But what does that mean? For instance, if a cosmos with only a single star and one planet were somehow possible, and the latter happened to evolve life and the addition of conscious life, then on the basis of that single example it might likewise seem unremarkable to its inhabitants ("Oh, it's just a conventional attribute of planets that they produce us."). But if their research eventually concluded that other versions of star/planet systems were possible (in theory) that would not produce such entities, and these "barren" worlds might even be the vast majority rather the rule, then it starts appearing like an incredible stroke of luck. The only existing "universe" (a single star and its planet) just happening to possess the "right circumstances" to nurture biological processes over the long haul.

In our cosmos, of course, the problem is remedied by the Earth being one grain of sand in a beachful of it, allowing its "uniqueness" to be more likely and truly unremarkable. However, we'd be faced with a similar oddity raised up to another level -- if other universes are possible with different laws that would have little or no chance of yielding life / consciousness (at least of this kind) anywhere in them. Inviting similar remedy that those "other nomological systems" do not (or have not) exist[ed] as mere potential, theory, or thought experiment (nominally). I.E., a more crowded situation.

DENNIS OVERBYE: . . . Steven Weinstein, a philosopher of science at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, termed the phrase “law of nature” as “a kind of honorific” bestowed on principles that seem suitably general, useful and deep. How general and deep the laws really are, he said, is partly up to nature and partly up to us, since we are the ones who have to use them.

But perhaps, as Dr. Davies complains, Plato is really dead and there are no timeless laws or truths. A handful of poet-physicists harkening for more contingent nonabsolutist laws not engraved in stone have tried to come up with prescriptions for what John Wheeler, a physicist from Princeton and the University of Texas in Austin, called “law without law.”

As one example, Lee Smolin, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, has invented a theory in which the laws of nature change with time. It envisions universes nested like Russian dolls inside black holes, which are spawned with slightly different characteristics each time around. But his theory lacks a meta law that would prescribe how and why the laws change from generation to generation.

Holger Bech Nielsen, a Danish physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and one of the early pioneers of string theory, has for a long time pursued a project he calls Random Dynamics, which tries to show how the laws of physics could evolve naturally from a more general notion he calls “world machinery.”

On his Web site, Random Dynamics, he writes, “The ambition of Random Dynamics is to ‘derive’ all the known physical laws as an almost unavoidable consequence of a random fundamental ‘world machinery.’”

Dr. Wheeler has suggested that the laws of nature could emerge “higgledy-piggledy” from primordial chaos, perhaps as a result of quantum uncertainty. It’s a notion known as “it from bit.” Following that logic, some physicists have suggested we should be looking not so much for the ultimate law as for the ultimate program.

Anton Zeilinger, a physicist and quantum trickster at the University of Vienna, and a fan of Dr. Wheeler’s idea, has speculated that reality is ultimately composed of information. He said recently that he suspected the universe was fundamentally unpredictable.

I love this idea of intrinsic randomness much for the same reason that I love the idea of natural selection in biology, because it and only it ensures that every possibility will be tried, every circumstance tested, every niche inhabited, every escape hatch explored. It’s a prescription for novelty, and what more could you ask for if you want to hatch a fecund universe?

But too much fecundity can be a problem. Einstein hoped that the universe was unique: given a few deep principles, there would be only one consistent theory. So far Einstein’s dream has not been fulfilled. Cosmologists and physicists have recently found themselves confronted by the idea of the multiverse, with zillions of universes, each with different laws, occupying a vast realm known in the trade as the landscape.

In this case there is meta law — one law or equation, perhaps printable on a T-shirt — to rule them all. This prospective lord of the laws would be string theory, the alleged theory of everything, which apparently has 10500 solutions. Call it Einstein’s nightmare.

But it is soon for any Einsteinian to throw in his or her hand. Since cosmologists don’t know how the universe came into being, or even have a convincing theory, they have no way of addressing the conundrum of where the laws of nature come from or whether those laws are unique and inevitable or flaky as a leaf in the wind.

These kinds of speculation are fun, but they are not science, yet. “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” goes the saying attributed to Richard Feynman, the late Caltech Nobelist, and repeated by Dr. Weinberg.

Maybe both alternatives — Plato’s eternal stone tablet and Dr. Wheeler’s higgledy-piggledy process — will somehow turn out to be true. The dichotomy between forever and emergent might turn out to be as false eventually as the dichotomy between waves and particles as a description of light. Who knows?

The law of no law, of course, is still a law. --Laws of Nature, Source Unknown; NYT, December 18, 2007

 

I like the way Douglas Adams put it in his story of the puddle of water...

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”


― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

It's similar to the argument from incredulity that so many things had to be just so, and happen most fortunately for us to be here, when, in fact the chances we are here are 100%, certainty. The Universe was not designed for us, we evolved to fit in a certain subset of the various conditions contained therein, a very small and fragile subset. If the two meteors that were in the news had switched trajectories we and nearly everything on Earth might be dying as we speak. By fortuitous circumstance we exist, and we may be the first species on our planet capable of surviving the inevitable catastrophic event that has happened over and over in the history of life on Earth.

Grumpy

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Winning the lotto looks to be lopsidedly beneficial until you count all the losers. Same with planets and stars.

 

It has to do with unconscious projection, where the structure of the unconscious mind becomes conscious by being reflected outside ourselves. Since both result in the same structuring, and we reverse cause and effect, both appear to be closely tied.

For example, in ancient times, people saw gods in nature. This projection comes from the right brain which has integrated observations. It provides a system by which nature now seems to be integrated to the left brain. Now nature appears to act so well within the realm of expectations. This is still done today. I generate a lot of ideas to show how easy it would be to use a different projection some of which integrate much better than the specialty theories that are restricted to only one specialty.

 

Human beings evolved here on Earth, and for that reason are well adapted to the conditions here. So some have suggested that the Earth must have been designed so as to be our home, with temperatures conducive to our survival, water to drink, breathable air and so on. Our garden of eden.

Of course, if living beings with very different biochemistries evolved in the methane atmospheres of more distant planets, they will probably be quite comfortable in physical conditions that would be instantly deadly to humans. They might have even decided that all the cold and methane and absence of poisonous oxygen are the result of design.

I think that the anthropic arguments are just the most recent contemporary variants on the traditional theistic design arguments.

The new twist seems to be the claim that not only are planetary science and chemistry fine-tuned for our human pleasure, all of the universe's constants are fine-tuned to make our sort of material world possible.

My own response is that we will still have a situation where no matter what the laws and constants of physics happen to be, if it's possible for stable and functional form and structure to exist in those conditions (however alien those conditions, forms and structures might seem to us here in this universe), and if conscious beings then evolved in that universe, then those beings might imagine that their perhaps quite bizarre universe had been designed expressly for them, because they are so well adapted to it and feel so comfortable in it.

The crucial and often implicit premise in these anthropic arguments seems to be that no universe is even conceivably possible unless it's precisely our existing universe. The only cosmic scene in which form, order and function can possibly arise is precisely this one. I don't know how the anthropists could possibly know that and to me the premise seems unlikely by its very nature.

We've scarcely begun to understand the physics and ontology of our own universe. I see nothing that justifies our announcing any broad sweeping (and dismissive) conclusions about the nature of any and all alternative universes.

Once we have opened the door to imagining physics being different, we have no way that I can see of predicting what those alternative physical principles must be. Just plugging different constants into what we currently believe are this universe's laws of physics doesn't even start to address what might be possible if the laws of physics were themselves different. There certainly doesn't seem to be any justification for our announcing the impossibility of functional life-analogues (however alien they are to our expectations) possibly evolving in unknown conditions in alternative universes, when we haven't even established the bounds and limits of what's possible here in this universe that we've started to know a little about.

 

The universe was created by spirit. How is this possible? The wave-function exists and is part of reality. The wave-function is spirit. The big bang was caused by a quantum fluctuation. Nothing existed before the big bang, except a quantum fluctuation. A quantum fluctuation is a wave function. A wave function is spirit. Therefore, spirit caused the universe to exist.

What spirit is powerful enough to create a whole universe? The Holy Spirit (a.k.a. God).

 

Carl Sagan already coined the term carbon chauvinism to express the same thing more succinctly, as all hubris we know is necessarily human.

 

What created the big bang? Nothingness? Magic?
Scientists say: we don't know.
Theologians say: God.
Atheists say: Science doesn't know, but most definitely not God.

My answer is: spirit. Wave functions are the invisible, impossible to detect and mysterious parts of reality that science is vaguely aware of. Wave-functions are ubiquitous, all pervasive, and are part of every quantum system, including empty space itself. Spirit is

What is important here is that quantum systems (spirit) would have preceded the big bang. The big bang is said to have been a quantum event. The only way that is possible is if quantum systems existed before the big bang. If so, then we are using different words to say the same thing. Out of respect, the only spirit powerful enough to create the big bang (and create the universe) is the Holy spirit (aka God, aka the Creator). Spirit (wave-functions) are just a back door into our quantum (un-classical) universe.

 

It is a miracle that anything exists at all. A good algorithm (laws of physics) should in no way be confused with the ability to dictate, to create, a law of nature. Mathematical descriptions are nice, observations are good, but it takes a mighty and majestic Creator of the universe(s) to assign physics constants to the invisible fingers that implement nature.

I would call it atheist chauvinism.

 

Mazulu

Algorithms do not create, they describe what has already come into existence. Unfortunately for those still laboring under the god delusion the Universe's default position is no god(nor any other phenomena that violates physical principles). Physical laws were created when the Universe began. Mathematics does not create any law, it only quantifies them.

What existed before the Big Bang is unavailable to us from within the Universe. It, however, was not nothing, it is just unknown. Scientists are correct to say "We don't know", theologians are deluded to think they do. And Atheists are just recognizing the fact that there is no evidence in this Universe for any of the concepts of gods man has made up, so far. Atheists(at least the intelligent ones)do not claim there is no god, nor any possibility of his/her/it's existence. All Atheists say is they do not accept any of the concepts of gods they have been exposed to. We do not "believe" there are no gods, it is not possible to know if there is a legitimate god hidden in this vast Universe, but the evidence so far says there isn't one(or, rather, no event so far seen in this Universe REQUIRES a being or entity to exist that can violate Nature's laws).

Grumpy

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LOL @ Mazola worshipping an unpredictable wave function. My what the religionists won't do to preserve their pet fantasy!