Physicist Steven Weinberg argues inthis essay that all of the constants aren’t that finely tuned after all. He cites the example of the formation of carbon from helium as support of his stance.
Some stuff in this thread prompts me to propose what I call The Long-Shot Fallacy (if someone has already described this behavior, just give me the usual Dope slap): if the chances of something happening are miniscule, one may declare that the thing is impossible.
This is what the Antropians (Anthropicers, Antropissers, whatever they call themselves) are doing. But a longshot ceases to be a longshot when it wins the race. The chances of a cat marching into my office right now, hopping up on my desk, then farting in my face are damned slim. But if it happens, it happens.
I think this point needs to be stressed more. It is fallacious to use an extremely low probability to prove that an event didn’t happen after the event has happened. It is highly improbable that anything at all happened in exactly the way that it did.
In my humble opinion it is less improbable that the first self-replicating molecule arose by chance than that the universe and everything in it was created by a supernatural being with the wave of a supernatural “hand.”
What if we were living in a simulation? Do the religious, 6000-year-old-Earther’s win? Or do the athiest scientists?
I’m not trying to screw up the course of conversation here, but rather to interject something relevant, but yet 90 degrees off.
Sure, but the anthropic principle isn’t arguing against observable events; it’s arguing against theories. If I win three pick-six lotteries in a row, people aren’t arguing that I wasn’t declared the three-peat winner. But they aren’t going to say “Well, since it happened, it happened,” either. They’re going to say–and quite rightly–“The game was rigged.” And if someone flips a fair coin and gets 50 heads in a row, I’m going to want to look at that “fair” coin more closely, too. Repeatedly seeing events which a model claims are very improbable ought to make you question the model. (The strong anthropic principle is not a very scientifically satisfying response, of course, since it aims to replace unlikely models with no-model-at-all.)
I like to consider the anthropic principle when I hear of some atrocity committed in the name of religion. The anthropic principle implies a god who set the fine-structure constant at 1/137 so that atoms wouldn’t spontaneously fuse or break apart, and a God that designed the blood-clotting cascade and the human eye and all other life in the universe, if any. This god is evidently the same entity who some people seem to believe upholds a divine mandate to pursue tribal feuds for thousands of years, and who cares very deeply about the prosperity of a specific group of intelligent beings on a specific planet and who cares very deeply about the elimination of a group of intelligent beings who were historically enemies of the tribe he wants to prosper. Such things seem incomprehensibly more shallow than tuning a physical constant that affects the entire universe, and it’s difficult to believe, for example, that the entity in whose name suicide bombings are perpetrated is the same entity that determined the permeability of free space.
The factual part of the last paragraph is this: supposing that modern physics did point to the existence of a god, it would not and cannot point to the existence of any specific god, except, perhaps, a god whose only achievement was the tuning of physical constants. It would also permit any god who was capable of tuning physical constants, but not a specific god. This issue can be applied to many logical arguments, actually. “I have proven logically that some god must exist” does not lead to “I have proven the existence of the specific god in which I believe.”
I don’t think this is the same thing that creationists, and those who say the anthropic principle proves the universe was made for us are saying. The creationists claim that since the probability of a self-replicating molecule is so low there hasn’t been enough time for there to be any possibility at all that it arose by chance, ergo God.
And it isn’t necessary to get 3 such molecules in a row. One is enough when mutation and natural selection enter the picture…
I haven’t heard it argued that the probability (of whatever event is being discussed–fine-tuning of physical parameters, creation of self-replicating molecules, Earthlike planets, etc.–within some theory) is zero, merely that it is very very small, so that the event seems to be very very unlikely. This by itself is not an argument for God or Intelligent Design, just a probabilistic argument against the model. I’m just saying that I don’t find this an unreasonable line of argument in principle; it’s a reasonable Bayesian use of evidence to adjust probabilities of belief in your model.
In practice I don’t think we know enough about the universe to make strong arguments in either direction for many of these cases; I’m not trying to argue the pro-ID side here. We don’t even have a fully unified theory yet, let alone understand its parameter space well enough to estimate the “probability” (parameter-space measure) of a life-supporting universe. The conditions required for self-reproducing and mutatable molecules are not understood well enough to decide whether they would occur randomly on the early Earth at a rate of 10[sup]-6[/sup]/year or 10[sup]-26[/sup]/year (NB: I just picked those numbers at random; as far as I know we don’t even know that much). The Drake equation is famous for being an equation none of whose eight (or so) variables we know anything about.
My three-peat example was just chosen to get the win probability to absurdly-low levels ~10[sup]-18[/sup] (where a rigged game becomes a more likely hypothesis than a fairly-won game); I didn’t mean the “3” to be any sort of global value. If the self-reproducing molecules are created at a rate of 10[sup]-18[/sup]/year, creating even a single one is a pretty unlikely occurrence.
Of course, the fact that we have only a single (tiny corner of a) universe to observe makes a lot of these parameter-space musings a lot more difficult, and maybe in some cases physically impossible.
My point is that probabilities don’t matter. A self-replicating molecule ( or collection of molecules) exists. There are at least two methods by which this could have come about. One is it happened by chance and another is some sort of supernatural agent purposefully caused it. In either case the time to compute the probability that it happened is long since past. As I have said elsewhere, I think the second possibility for its origin is at least as unlikely as the first.
For a really excellent explanation of how life is not only extremely unlikely to have arisen, go read “Back to Darwin: The Scientific Case for Deistic Evolution” by Michael A. Corey.
"…The odds for the spontaneous appearance of the first living cell have been conservatively calculated to be approximately 1 in 10 to the 78,436th power, a number so vast that it is trillions of times greater than the total number of vibrations experienced by all the subatomic particles in the universe from the beginning of time until the present.
“Astronomer Hugh Ross comes up with a much more outlandish figure for the probablility that life could have evolved by pure chance. Reasoning that the simplest possible form of life is a virus, Ross proceeds to calculate the odds for the spontaneous evolution of the simplest conceivable type of virus. He assumes that such a creature would have to possess a bare minimum of 239 protein molecules in order to reproduce itself, each possessing an average of 445 amino acids, and all precisely positioned with regard to all the others. He further assmes that each amino acid must first be activated by the appropriate set of enzymes, and that the only amino acids that can be used are of the left-handed variety (all of which are very reasonable biochemical assumptions). When all of these factors are taken into consideration, Ross comes up with the spectacular figure of 1 in 10 to the 15,000,000,000th power for the spontaneous evolution of the first living creature” (pp.32-33).
But of course, it only had to accidentally happen once, so it probably did just that. 
Can’t we take this one step back and argue that a supernatural agent created the conditions to allow the probability to exist? Maybe the supernatural agent has thousands of universes, and is hoping just one will take off? I guess I’m saying that it’s kind of useless to try to argue against or for intelligent design, because you could always go back another level of abstraction. Also, who’s to say that if there’s no intelligent design, that there’s no diety watching over things anyway?
This probability discussion is interesting, though. It’s like hearing about encryption. It’s said a 32-bit encryption of a certain algorythm takes 20 years to crack. But, that’s only if the very last combination that exists is the one that you try. I think you could argue the same for the spontaneous generation of a self-replicating molecule, too.
I’ve always wondered about that too. Isn’t this an inherent problem in nearly all religious/philosophical discussions? It seems that there are always an infinite number of conspiracy theories that can be used to refute any given scenario. And in an possibly infinite world, I don’t see how we can estimate probablities accurately.
How do we know anything at all? (Not trying to be sarcastic. I’m genuinely wondering.)
30% of the data in general circulation publications are fabricated. 
The author should also have included a computation of the probability that a supernatural agent started the whole works by voice command.
One way that has worked well is to study nature and find out what happens. Then make a guess as to why it happens. Make some predictions based on that guess as to what will happen if things are arranged in a certain way. Arrange things that way in an experiment. If the predictions are confirmed the guess was probably correct, or at least close enough to rely on pending further information. If the predictions aren’t confirmed, modify the guess and try again.
I know we have good theories that work within a closed system, but how do we know that there isn’t someone/something beyond that system? Study nature, fine, but that doesn’t really deal with the “intelligent design”, “simulation argument”, “divine deceiver”, etc. questions very well.
Of course not and it never will for those who insist on adding an element that isn’t needed. If someone wants to believe in some supernatural layer over and above that which is observable and measureable it doesn’t hurt a thing just so long as they follow the method and report their results honestly.
How could you possibly falsify that proposition? This is an argument you could discuss and speculate about, but you could never come to any kind of conclusion based on data.
Well, first of all, any stated probabilility on the likelyhood for life having arisen is most likely complete bunk. We don’t know how likely it is; we have only one data point from which to reason, and while we can make some educated wild-ass guesses as to what physical processes would need to occur in order for a self-replicating molecule to be formed, until someone runs an experiement (or a Monte Carlo simulation that is detailed enough to represent the relevent physical laws) those numbers are just as well pulled from the intestines of a dyspeptic emu.
This we can say: The fact that life (as we define it in terms of self-replicating DNA molecules and the machines they build) exists proves that life can exist. The likelyhood of it have having happened is P=1. The likelyhood that it could arise over any, say, 2 billion year period in a primordial environment is P=?. Organic molecules–the simple bases–appear spontaneously in nature in all manner of environments. The specific set of conditions or operations for those bases to come together in a self-replicating pattern is unknown.
Any speculation on an unknowable, untestable, omnipotent ubër-intellect is no more valuable or conclusive than any other freshman dorm-room bull session.
Stranger
I agree, and hope you were quoting me on that basis rather than quoting me to refute what I said!
Next step is to simulate this in ever faster, ever more precise computers. When we can model every aspect of our physical and quantumn world, we could just watch and wait for the computer to determine what set of conditions will allow self-replicating patterns. And if we let that continue for 100 million virtualized years, those simulated organisms may start to ask themselves the same question, and start building their own ever faster, ever more precise computers…
Here it sounds like you’re basically applying to the weak anthropic principle, saying that our observations are a result of postselection and so can’t be used as evidence for any theories. This is logically consistent, but once the anthropic principle is used, there’s not much room for further scientific exploration (since I can’t use my observations as evidence for or against theories).
The problem is knowing when appealing to the anthropic principle is the correct response. The only way of knowing this, ISTM, is to try to find theories which explain the observed behavior (without wAP) and decide whether the theories are elegant enough to be right, or whether they reek of ad-hoc fine-tuning. My example of the lottery winner was one where I think the probabilities (of an event that has already happened) can be said to matter. Here we have two theories exist to explain an observed event. The relative sizes of the conditional probabilities (P(event|theory A) and P(event|theory B)) are, then, useful in Bayesian inference to evaluate which theory is more likely correct, given some knowledge of the prior probabilities.
Of course, we can’t use this to logically argue between evolution and creation (sorry, I didn’t mean to argue that we could), because we have no mathematical model to describe “creation” (in particular, we can’t determine the prior probabilities in any way that would be logically convincing; it would all come down to personal beliefs).
If I understand what you’re saying above then this is irrelevant; it’s already happened, so we can’t infer anything about how it happened regardless of the “probabilities.”
Just clarifying, enhancing, and using the opportunity to say the same thing but in my own way and therefore claim to be original and outstandingly intelligent, not to mention stunningly handsome.
From what we’ve seen, nothing about life as we know it involves invoking any quantum principles (except insofar as those define the physical properties of the “macro” world) so it is somewhat more simple than that, but still we are only able to model behaviors in the macro world in very primative or simplistic fashion, a prime example being the protein folding, which follows known principles but is extremely complicated to predict due to the wide range of parameters and effects. It’s easier, at this point, to actually run an experiment provoking proteins to form rather than to simulate it, though perhaps in another 20 or 30 years computational molecular science will be at a point of being able to simulate large scale proteins.
It still won’t tell use how we (life on earth) came to be, though, and thus can always be leveraged into an argument that doesn’t disprove Intelligent Design. If we can do it (or if it could happen “randomly”, of course some Og could do it as well…and so on.
Stranger
I must have said the same thing on the SDMB half a dozen times.
This statement of mine:
“As I have said elsewhere, I think the second possibility for its origin is at least as unlikely as the first.”
was directed specifically at this citation:
Originally Posted by hyjyljyj
“…The odds for the spontaneous appearance of the first living cell have been conservatively calculated to be approximately 1 in 10 to the 78,436th power, a number so vast that it is trillions of times greater than the total number of vibrations experienced by all the subatomic particles in the universe from the beginning of time until the present.”
My point being that if you try to use probability to show that one of two alternatives couldn’t happen, you also have to use probability on the other alternative to determine whether or not it could happen.
And I could have gone on to say that citing a low probability for “the spontaneous appearance of the first living cell” is a straw man. I don’t know of any evolutionary biologist who claims that things went from no life to living cells in one step.