You’ve described the physics issue. The religious is about justifying God’s existence by looking at why humans exist. “Humans shouldn’t exist; therefore, God exists.”
I’d say the religious argument is simply an instance of the God-of-the-gaps fallacy. Before there was a naturalistic account of lightning and thunder, it was attributed to irascible gods. Until we had Darwin’s naturalistic explanation for biological design, it was attributed to God’s creation. At present, we do know the correct naturalistic resolution to the fine-tuning problem in physics - therefore God did it.
Regarding Anthropic principle, why is this not a tautology: “We observe the universe we observe.”?
I’ve heard it said that Hoyle invoked the anthropic principle to predict the existence of a Beryllium resonance to explain the prevalence of carbon. “Carbon can’t be made in abundance without this resonance. Life as we know it (and Hoyle specifically) would not exist without carbon. But Hoyle exists. Therefore the resonance exists.”
But this argument could be shortened to “Carbon can’t be made in abundance without this resonance. We observe large amounts of carbon. Therefore the resonance exists.”
I mean, if it was the existence of molybdenum he had to explain, he wouldn’t say he resorted to the anthropic principle, would he…?
Sure, and natural selection is also a tautology. Yet nobody before Darwin realized the profound implications, that it could account for apparent biological design without a creator.
The importance of the anthropic principle is that, in conjunction with the multiverse hypothesis, it is one possible resolution to the fine-tuning problem in physics, as described above in the thread. The anthropic principle is not just “we observe the universe we observe”, it is “if all possible kinds of universe exist, then self-aware beings will exist in the subset of of universes that are compatible with the evolution of self-aware beings”.
I’ll agree that “survival of the fittest” is a tautology. Maybe it betrays a prejudice, but I can really feel that this little statement gives me much more, providing huge insight into many facets of life on earth (and presumably the cosmos). And with extensions into computer science, etc.
“We observe the universe we observe” just doesn’t do much for me, except (maybe) requiring that I envision a multiverse (beyond observation). I am allowed to envision a multiverse without invoking anthropic principle, I suppose. Maybe it encourages me to consider a multiverse, where before I was puzzling about why my (solitary) universe was so “comfy”.
I guess I just don’t “feel it” with anthropic principle, whereas I really do “feel it” with natural selection.
It’s worth noting here that there are multiple different anthropic principles, applying on different scales. At its simplest, I think it’s really more of an exception to a principle than a principle itself. The Copernican Principle says that where we happen to be in the Universe isn’t special, and so observations we make here probably apply to the whole Universe. The Anthropic Principle, however, points out that where we happen to be is special, at least to the extent that where we happen to be is a place capable of supporting life, whereas most of the Universe is not, and so our local observations might differ from the Universe as a whole in ways relevant to the formation of life.
As an example, if I measure the local density of matter, I find that it’s on average a few tons per cubic meter. But I can’t conclude from that that the density of matter in the Universe as a whole is that high: In fact it’s much lower. That’s because such a locally-high density of matter is necessary for the formation of life as we know it.
You first need to understand the nature of the fine-tuning problem in physics. The merits of the proposed solution will not be apparent unless you understand the problem. The problem is that we can’t find any models that constrain the parameters of the universe. See posts 36, 38,50, 54, 57.
So, one proposed solution to the fine-tuning problem in physics is the multiverse, and then the anthropic principle is sufficient to explain why we seem to live in a universe with Goldilocks parameters.
It’s slightly more profound than that: it tells us something about our universe. Our universe is (at least) complex enough for observers like us to exist in it.
This. I totally hate the concept (even though it still might be true).
How are they preserved? You do every single thing that can physically be done. It just so happen that this version of you is the one that posted a message on the SDMB rather than the version that balanced a bottle of ketchup on his nose.
How is free will and morality preserved if you inevitably both give the child a candy and bash his head with a hammer? You will do both. There will be a you that gives the candy and a you who blugeons the kid. It’s inescapable. How each being unaware of the other existence preserves morality and free will?
During the next minute you will decide to give all your possessions to feed starving children and you’ll also decide to murder your grandmother for the inheritance money. And you’ll decide to balance a bottle of ketchup on your nose. How could we judge your “morality”, given that?
There may be universes where you give the kid a piece of candy, and universes where you bash the kid’s head in… but there aren’t equal numbers of universes with those two outcomes (and yes, this is a situation where we can meaningfully compare the numbers of each). The number of universes in which you don’t hammer the kid (I hope) vastly outnumber the ones in which you do. By how much? That’s determined by your free will.
You slipped that in there under the radar.
Has anyone worked out a satisfactory account of QM probabilities in the Many Worlds interpretation?
How so? At the precedent moment, my thoughts, actions, choices, etc… were also any of my possible states of mind, and the moment before too, and so on, since my birth. So, the number of universes were I don’t bash the head of the child just depends on the path the me in this universe happens to have followed. I really don’t see where there is room from free will here. Maybe there are anyway less universes where I can be born with a significant tendancy to bash children heads, but it’s just dependant on my original genetic make-up, since I follow all possible paths from the moment of conception.
In some universes, I’m going to leave ande bash a random child head just to prove my point in this argument. It is certain that I will do that because it’s possible. How guilty are the versions of me that will do that given that they necessarily must exist? It seems to me that they just happen to be on the wrong branch, having lost the “die roll”. If an action is unavoidable, how can it be “free”?
Most of the other people in this universe also don’t bash children’s heads in. The vast majority, in fact, such a vast majority that, even out of seven billion people, it’s still noteworthy when someone does it. Did they all just happen to be in the universe where they don’t kill children? It seems much more rational to conclude that the probability of a human being in such a state that they’ll kill children is much less than the probability that they won’t. How can we describe this fact that humans usually don’t kill children?
I guess you would say “morality”. But I disagree. Because the concept of morality, for me at least, requires the possibility to make a choice. And making all the possible choices is the same as making no choice at all.
I am who I am but put a child besides Me and the next second, even though the vast majority of future me won’t do anything notable, some will inevitably kill the child, in various ways, for various reasons (all possible ways, all possible reasons). Since the versions of me who kill the child were, one second before, exactly the same person as the versions who don’t kill the child, and since these killer versions must exist, how can you say that morality is at play? What is morally wrong with these child killer versions? One second before they were perfectly moral people, not inclined to kill anybody. But somehow the fact that the laws of the multiverses put them inevitably in existence makes them morally guilty?
If we replace these laws by god, for instance : in one second god will create in our office someone who has an irrepresible desire to kill the coworker next to me (no child around). How can this person, created specifically with the mindset required to kill my coworker and the opportunity to do so can be morally guilty if he does? Wouldn’t god be morally responsible for creating this person? I don’t see any difference with the future versions of myself that will inevitably kill my coworker because the physical laws of the mutiverse require their existence.
Gravitons do have wavelength and spin (in fact, they have more possible spin states than photons), but that’s not the issue: you can build complex things out of a reservoir of identical things—for instance, you can use a cellular automaton composed out of repetitions of the same basic cell perform universal computation. In principle, there doesn’t seem to be any obstacle to something like a computer made of gravitational waves (and I’ve toyed with the idea of advanced civilizations encoding themselves into gravitational wave patterns for a science fiction story…).