http://www.harmlessfiction.com/?p=9
http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/07/new_physics_contest.php
And I imagine that it will only be a matter of time before the playful little monkeys at Pharyngula will make their pilgrimage to Scott's place to add their Douglas Adams brand of cluelessness to the mix. I say, "imagine", because I haven't been back to Scott's after taking a few early shots at their non-applicable childishness, and I kinda doubt that he even left my comments on the board, but who knows?
Anyway... go visit the SideShow to see how not to do science, and that's as nice as I can be about it, because they don't even understand how thier mindset adversely affects the way that they do science.
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I COMMONLY run into people who get their information from popularized websites that are ideologically motivated to take a stand against the anthropic principle because they believe that any implication that we are not here by accident necessarily constitutes evidence for the existence of god, and/or, an "intelligent designer".
They buy straight into the creationist hype, in other words, and they typically don't even care to know the real reason why the AP was introduced. It is not commonly understood what is meant by first principles in context with the Large Numbers Hypothesis that eventually lead to Brandon Carter's derivation of the anthropic principle as an alternative to the extended Copernican mentality that still dominates the mind of science to this day, in spite of the fact that our best observational evidence flat-out contradicts this anticentrist dogma to better than a 99% level of confidence.
The anthropic principle came about from an honest effort by physicists, like Herman Bondi, Fred Hoyle, Robert Dicke, and Paul Dirac, who kept running up against the same problems that we have today when trying to find a causal explanation for the physical structuring of the universe. Many think that the popularizers of the principle, Barrow and Tipler, invented it themselves, when in reality, Brandon Carter wasn't even the first person to state the principle in it's current incomplete form.
At the conference in Cracow, in 1973, Brandon Carter said that the AP respresents a line of thought against exaggerated subservience to the Copernican-like Cosmological model that falls from the General Principle of Relativity, which requires all observers to experience the same laws of physics, so at any given time, the universe will be both homogeneous and isotropic, (in 3-D space). As previously noted this is not what is observed, and it has prompted Lawrence Krauss to note the following in his recent interview with "edge":
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/krauss06/krauss06.2_index.html
...we live in one universe, so we're a sample of one. With a sample of one, you have what is called a large sample variance. And maybe this just means we're lucky, that we just happen to live in a universe where the number's smaller than you'd predict. But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.
The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we're the center of the universe, or maybe the data is imply incorrect, or maybe it's telling us there's something weird about the microwave background results and that maybe, maybe there's something wrong with our theories on the larger scales. And of course as a theorist I'm certainly hoping it's the latter, because I want theory to be wrong, not right, because if it's wrong there's still work left for the rest of us.
More on this can be found here:
Does the motion of the solar system affect the microwave sky?
Carter said that he believed that the AP was potentially fertile but that it needs further development.
It is equally arrogant to assume a purely copernican universe as it is to conclude that we are at the center of the universe, because it does not logically follow from the ecobalanced nature of the anthropic coincidences and the large scale observational evidence, that life is as completely insignificant as a copernican principle would demand by extension. Carter called this anti-centrist approach, "dogma"... which in its most extreme form led to the "Perfect Cosmological Principle".
Modern anti-centrists and religious "anti-fanatics" are no less arrogant due to their pre-existing pre-dispositioning toward appealing to causality-lacking answers. Carter's observation clearly indicates that they still dogmatically deny the evidence in order to chase the same "random" extreme to the exact same meaningless dead-end. They have an **unbelievably** good imagination when it comes to avoiding any implication for anthropic prference, but absolutely none when it comes to embracing the idea:
What if... there's an uncertain infinite multiverse of quantum weird randomness... ? ... or something just as good...
uh-huh, What if... the freaking implications are true?... didya ever think of that?
Is John Wheeler the ONLY other person on earth besides me that is willing to even look in this context... ? How lame is that if it is true and the ToE is contingent, since an anthropic cosmological constraint *can* potentially either unify or explain *why* the forces can't be unified.
ANOTHER common misconception is that the anthropic cosmological principle is giving up on first principles, and so it runs contrary to the spirit of science, but it is not even possible to arrive at that conclusion without willfully ignoring that Brandon Carter never said that the AP was complete... e.g., potentially fertile, but that it needs further development.
The anthropic principle isn't giving up on first principles, rather, a failure to look for good physical reason why the implication for specialness is true, runs contrary to the spirit of HONEST science. I can't help but to shake my head whenever I hear someone say that, since the most popular alternative methods for picking the configuration of our universe are about as causality-dodging as scientific methods get!
Carter also pointed out that our situation is not necessarily central, it is inevitably privileged to some extent.
This point is critically important to this, (although, widely ignored), because the anthropic principle readily extends to, and cannot be restricted from incuding planets that inhabit every spiral galaxy that evolved within the same "plane/layer/habitable-zone" of conditions, (time and location-wise), as our own galaxy, (in terms of the commonality and continuity in the evolution of the same basic raw materials that were produced by our observed carbon chauvinistic universe). In this case, the principle is "biocentric", meaning that life is *more-generally* important to the physics of the universe at this particular time in its history, and so it will *necessarily* be every bit as common to this region of universe as the physical need for it demands.
In this same scientific context, real HONEST scientists will ask questions like; 'I wonder if intelligent life does something that *cumulatively* affects the physics of the universe and makes it necessary to the process?'
There is a valid physics question about the most-apparent evidence for the intrinsic finality within goal-oriented thermodynamic structuring in nature that has nothing to do with god, nor any form of intelligent "designer", but this is rarely, (if ever) recognized by either side of the "debate". There is an openly hostile and ideologically motivated effort to downplay scientific interpretations that include the appearance of "anthropic specialness" which occurs as a result of the debate, and the effect is to blind science to the potential that the anthropic principles has for making predictions about life elsewhere in the cosmos, as well as more locally.
If the most accurate cosmological principle is biocentric in nature, then the principle is telling us the good physical reason why the forces are constrained in the manner that they are. This science should not be ignored because politics and misplaced perceptions about geocentric arrogance get in the way.
SOMBODY has to be unafraid to look...
~
3 Comments:
3:51 AM
Anonymous said...
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3:56 AM
Simone Severini said...
I find this post very interesting. Finally, some proper information about the anthropic principle.
6:34 PM
island said...
Thank you, Simone, I recommend that you take a look at my web page at:
Anthropic-Principle.ORG
There is a whole library's worth of information about it at that location.
Thanks again!
More comments can be added below.
8 comments:
I already said something similar to this before, but this is a good place to recap. For just this universe or even a limited category to just “be” is for me a sort of existential loose end, a violation of the "principle of sufficient reason" for realness. Why this?, as Mortimer Adler, Paul Davies, Frank Tipler et al have asked. The idea that every possible universe (logically possible, or "mathematical structure" as Max Tegmark says) exists has been argued e.g. by Frank Tipler and Tegmark. Both have challenged the very idea of “existing” as a special status, asking just what that really is (it *is* hard to logically define what the difference between a platonic world and a “real” one of “stuff” is, which reminds me of the problem of defining consciousness etc.)
There are problems with that sort of perspective. For one thing, where does the parade of worlds end? Why stop with worlds that are at all like our sort of realm that seem made of “stuff” with “laws” (consistent behaviors) applying to it? Why not worlds like magical realms, with angels and demons, why not the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons, etc? Why not “God” in some sense, making for a reification at long last of Anselm’s ontological argument? Isn't that a cute irony, that those who push existential equivalency end up supporting angels, elves, fairies, and maybe big G him/herself. Furthermore: what's to stop these worlds and whatevers from interacting and interfereing with each other? Who's minding the whole mess?
Worst of all for the Bayesian probability of what we can expect to happen: the set of logically possible universes would not just be those expressing laws, but all possible ways for things to happen – just like all possible pixel arrangements for images. That means worlds where things happen just like they do here but then become chaotic etc. The number of possible arrangements that are not orderly is far more than the number that are. Hence, we have no expectation of lawful behavior in the future unless there is a genuine, underlying “virtus” to give order to a universe. I think this must come from “God” since there are not many “possible worlds” where things continue to behave lawfully anymore than there are very many “possible pictures” among pixel arrangements that are orderly scenes.(And no, the idea of self-selection does not help here. It isn’t just a matter of being in a universe with the right laws, it’s about there even being a likely continuity of laws to begin with. Even if we were in the 10^-1000 or so set of possible universes having gotten this far, we would have a tiny Bayesian chance of being in one that would continue to be like that. (Just like even if you only could be admitted to card games that already had drawn a royal flush, you now have no expectation to continue seeing lucky hands.) Tegmark and the other spaces cadets just don’t appreciate or publicize this point.
To me, the anthropic principle is an expression of a Will of some sort. Otherwise, why would things be this way? To just happen to have the exactly correct parameters, or the mess created by the idea of existential equivalency - neither is philosophically elegant, and it the legitimate alternative to political-type support for scientism and antitheism.
Hi Neil,
I agree with your logic up to the point that you hit God, since an inherent imbalance in the energy of the universe will also carry an expression of "will".
island:
Well, I'm not sure I understand how your theory of energy works, or how it differs from existing orthodoxy (point us to a defining post, perhaps.) In any case, my point is directed at parameters such as the fine structure constant and G just happening to have the values needed to support the development and thriving of life. I assume thermodynamics would still work in a universe with inhospitable constants, but there just wouldn't be any life. Life is a consequence of being "set up" just right at the beginning of it all; that is the mystery.
PS - I briefly reviewed your commentary about "Not Even Wrong" by Woit at my blog tyrannogenius. It was a rush job and I'll have to polish it up later.
I'm talking about the observed imbalance in the energy that prevented the big bang from producing a perfectly "flat", symmetrically balanced object. Hartle-Hawking tried to explain this via a random quantum fluctuation, which they claim resulted in the wave-form of our universe. But this requires a leap of faith beyond what we have evidence for, which is that this asymmetry pre-existed at the moment of the big bang.
The imbalance justifies the appearance of any entity that might arise as a result of the inherent need to satisfy the inequity, (in the manner and for the reasons that I've discussed throughout this blog).
Assuming that the universe is finite and bound, then our appearance is "pre-ordained", via LaPlace's Demon, within the matter field that gets layed down at the moment of the big bang.
I have no need for that hypothesis
While I'm thinking about your spin on this, don't forget what you can learn from Barrow and Tipler's The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. There are *many* parameters that need to be just right to enable life. The FSC and G are just a couple of examples, and many are quite independent (in orthodox terms), even if you think there's a neccessary connection between them and flatness.
PS - What do you think of the liberal many-worlders' (Tegmark, Tipler) belief in modal realism - the idea that everything that can self-consistenly exist, does? If MR is wrong, then why do some possible worlds "exist" and others don't? What kind of predicate or whatever, is "existing" anyway? I tie it to consciousness, and God/(whatever you call an ultimate reality), whether one can indulge a "need" for such hypotheses or not.
Neil, wouldn't you admit that my "spin" is preferred by the scientific method, (assuming that my physics and Einstein's were correct all along), since it answers the questions without projecting or making leaps of faith beyond what we actually have evidence for?
Rather than "spin", I'd call it "the necessarily preferred theory".
There are *many* parameters that need to be just right to enable life.
The important feature to this is that all of these "anthropic coincidences" are "ecobalanced" between diametrically opposing runaway tendencies.
It's known as the "goldilocks" constraint, and it is extremely useful in making predictions about life elsewhere in the universe, as well as here on earth.
For example, you can use it to predict that life won't be found on Venus or Mars... if you think for yourself a little bit... ;)
I do believe that they must all be connected but that certainly should not serve make one less curiously surprised, since it only compounds this very apparent "oddness", unless there is some good physical reason for it.
the idea that everything that can self-consistenly exist, does?
I think that you'd have to prove that this causality lacking lameness is preferred over my supported assertions, but as I explained to "Bee" at "Backreaction", you first must prove that Einstein was wrong because it's never been done.
thoughts-on-anthropic-principle
A good example of the values of the coupling constants of physics
conspiring to create the right conditions in the universe
where we can exist is theory of formation of helium. The visible universe consisists of roughly 25% helium and 75% hydrogen. Free neutrons decay into protons,electrons and antineutrinos in 15 minutes. In the early universe the neutrons have to fuse with protons and form helium nuclei before they can decay. This takes place by the coincidence of the weak, electromagnetic and greavitational
coupling constants having just the right values. A slight change in any of them and we would have ended up in universes made of hydogen only where stars like our Sun would not have formed.
As I understand it, anthropic selection occurs *on balance*, so there is a "tolerance" or a permissible variation, as long as whatever deviation away from conditions that are "ideal-for-life" are not permanently biased toward either extreme tendency that is relevant to the given anthropic coincidence.
Simply put, we're okay as long as the deviation isn't too far from the mean, or for too long.
Like, anthropic selection occurs between extreme and individually deadly human tendencies when environmental awareness about the ***cumulatively runaway*** greenhouse effect enables us to halt global warming, but only enough that we are still able to counterbalance the ***cumulatively runaway*** long term tendency toward glaciation that is predicted by empirically derived Milankovitch models.
Between the cluelessness ideologically motivated extremists exists nature and survival.
The extremists motivational considerations in this case are unchecked greed, (big business), vs, the "green movement" and certain death from stagnation.
That is how an "ecobalance" works. Either we, **contributing members** continue to **efficiently** increase entropy at our self-regulated rate, (on balance), or we will most certainly die. If either side ever got things all their way, we'd be done, but it obviously can't happen.
The fact that literally nobody realizes this proves that we don't really have squat to say about it.
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