People in discussions of an answer often give the excuse of the Anthropic Principle, e.g. “If it wasn’t like the situation described in the question, we would ask why it was some other way.”
This bothers the heck out of me.
It seems like any question phrased with a “why” can be answered with the anthropic principle.
Why is one plus one two?
because if one plus one was three we wouldn’t ask why one plus one wasn’t two, we would ask why one plus one was three.
Why did the apple fall from the tree onto Isaac Newton’s head?
Because if it didnt fall onto Newton’s head, we wouldn’t ask why it didn’t fall on Newton’s head.
Why did the Germans lose World War Two?
Because if they had won World War Two we would be asking why they won World War Two.
Why does the computer go off when I pull out the plug?
Because if the computer didn’t go off, you would be asking why the computer stayed on when you pulled out the plug.
Why is the anthropic principle legitimate?
Because if it wasn’t legitimate, you would be asking why it wasn’t legitimate?
This all seems like a disturbed explanation of the past solely in terms of justification of the present that completely skews and misinterprets the nature of the universe.
And yet many people still use it.
So, I want a factual answer here, is the anthropic principle legitimate?
The short answer is that the principle is only applied to statistical analysis (like the Roosevelt election poll example), not to empircal data, like the examples you gave. One can look at them and see all the relevant data:
Why is one plus one two? Because that is how mathematics was designed: it’s a finite, knowable tool, not a real world object.
Why did the apple fall from the tree onto Isaac Newton’s head? I think that’s a country legend but the answer is because gravity and circumstance came together to make it so. It’s a reactive question (What happened?), not a predictive one (e.g. a poll).
Why did the Germans lose World War Two? Bad planning and an insane leader; also reactive.
Why does the computer go off when I pull out the plug? Because there’s no power. Empirical experimentation reveals the answer, not theorising.
Any time that you have to guess you risk falling foul of the principle. If you don’t know all the data involved in the question your chance of making an error increases. A pre-election poll uses a few thousand people and tries to stretch their answers to match the number of people who will be voting. It’s a guess. Only when the election is held do you get a full data set and a valid, incontestible answer (GWB notwithstanding).
That is not the anthropic principle, as I understand it. It is invoked in answer to questions like “how come the earth is perfectly set up for life in general and humans in particular to live?”. The AP answer would be something like “because if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here to ask the question”. Perfectly reasonable.
There is a stronger form that additionally says “and so there has to be a place somewhere in the universe for intelligent life to arise”, but that’s more deterministic than I’m comfortable with.
If you look at the earth, you see that if conditions were a bit different, if the Earth were like Mars or Venus for instance, we couldn’t survive. The AP says that well, we are where we are because conditions on Earth were such that we could evolve. If creatures just like us exist anywhere in the universe, we can expect to find a planet like Earth. So it says that you cannot hope to explain why the Earth is perfect for us; the explanation is that we are here.
Now cosmologists have another problem. It is known that if certain physical constants were even slightly different, we couldn’t exist. Either hydrogen couldn’t fuse, or helium couldn’t, or carbon couldn’t form long chains or stars couldn’t form or something. It really is incredible and how can it be explained? One conjecture is that there are infinitely many island universes “out there” and they all have their own versions of the physical constants that are set at the instant of the big bang. And in all infinity of time, it is inevitable that there will be at least one (actually infinitely many) such islands in which the constants are just perfect. And we are in it, because if the constants were otherwise, we would not be around to raise the question. This is not a scientific statement; there is no way to refute it, even in principle. So we conclude that such questions are probably unanswerable and invoking the AP is just a way of avoiding them. I accept the argument, but I don’t much like it. It is just below, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” in difficulty.
A “pop-culture” phrasing of the Anthropic Principle is the question asked by of lottery winner (or an accident victim :() - “Why do you think this happened to YOU?”
Well, it had to happen to SOMEONE, didn’t it? When it happens to you, personally, it just doesn’t make sense statistically. But when you realize that for every case where an unlikely event happens, there are so many cases where it doesn’t…
The lottery - BTW - is like the “strong” anthropic principle (that is, the “rules of the game” posit that there MUST be a winner). The traffic accident example is like the “weak” AP - it’s almost certain to happen to someone, somewhere, but it isn’t existentially INEVITABLE.
More specifically, the strong anthropic principle can only be applied to existance. Its not “If X didn’t happen we would ask why X didn’t happen”, its “If X didn’t happen, there would be noone to ask why why X didn’t happen”. Its a subtle difference and one that often escapes people’s notice. You cant generalise it to the examples you gave above.