Fine tuning?

[Laird]

I'm still mulling this over....

Even if we only see winners, we could still grasp the casino - which I assume stands for the theoretical search space - has a very low probability of winning against the House. As such, if we only see winners, we'd still think something unusual is happening...right?

Well, presumably, the proponents of a multiverse would be claiming that it has generated a vast, vast number of universes, such that the probability of at least one of them having favourable constants is in fact high despite it being low for any given one of them. For the analogy to hold, then, we would have to imagine a vast, vast casino - not a typically sized one - filled with so many gamblers that the probability of at least one of them winning consistently against the House is in fact high despite it being low for any given one of them.

I also think Goff's point here is that we cannot infer a multiverse just because we see that this universe is fine tuned for life. If there was strong reason to believe in a multiverse anyway, then perhaps a multiverse could be used as the best argument for why this universe is fine tuned. AFAIK no such evidence exists that would convince us there has to be a multiverse where every possible combination of constants is manifested?

That's a fair point, but it's not the point to which I was responding.

I also think that "cannot" is a bit strong, but "ought not to" seems justifiable on the basis that we have no need of that explanation: fine-tuning can be explained in a more plausible way that fits the rest of the evidence that we discuss here on PQ.

[Laird]

The idea of a "multiverse" is weird, anyways, because it assumes that all of physical reality is the "universe", and that other such "universes" just exist for no reason in some unobserved void of nothing, outside or overlapping this one, for no particular reason.

No... all of reality, including however many physical subsets, compose the Universe proper. No need for a weird redundancy.

Could this be more of a semantic quibble though?

I have experienced multiple other physical subsets of reality, each of them having apparent purpose and meaning. So, what exactly is the point of some random physical reality just existing, dead and empty, also physically undetectable, for no reason, just because Physicalists want to desperately avoid finetuning...?

Fair call. Of course, the physicalist has no problem with mindless matter existing for no reason, and doesn't need it to have a point, but for the rest of us...

Could this be more of a semantic quibble though?

No ~ I think it is entirely redundant nonsense. "Universe" has a clear meaning. "Multiverse" is desperate Physicalist nonsense that makes no sense in itself as a concept.

Reality is vastly more than just the physical subsets ~ there are entire astral and spiritual realities beyond this one, that the physical is just a limitation of.

Fair call. Of course, the physicalist has no problem with mindless matter existing for no reason, and doesn't need it to have a point, but for the rest of us...

Indeed ~ however, biological matter obviously doesn't have an appearance of being mindless, being far from merely chemistry and physics. So the Physicalist simply has cognitive dissonance if they deny mind, while being a mind and perceiving others to act similar to them.

[Laird]

No ~ I think it is entirely redundant nonsense.

Multiple physical universes versus multiple physical subsets of a singular universe really do seem to me to be two different ways of saying the same thing. Anyhow, it's not worth quibbling over.

Multiple physical universes versus multiple physical subsets of a singular universe really do seem to me to be two different ways of saying the same thing. Anyhow, it's not worth quibbling over.

I think that they just have rather different connotations, having originated from difference sources. But that's just me.

I also wanted to add, they're beginning to reconsider how big our universe is, and just began to consider this year that it may be smaller and more finite than we think. I posted a thread about it a while back. But either way, I think fine tuning is way less goofy sounding than a lot of these other theories they have for it. It's not impossible that our observable universe is all there is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w9R_foNLrg&t=327s

Wow the idea presented in that video surely deserved some serious effort to provide decent graphics!

I have said before (many of us have been here so long!) that I think a lot of cosmology and particle physics post about 1960 may turn out to be wrong. The idea that the universe is not the size it is supposed to be is very plausible. For example the Big Bang needed a kludge to get it started. As originally conceived, the bang would be followed by a swift collapse. The 'answer' was to invent a new field that switched on shortly after the BB and stretched space at a super fast pace. If you can invent ideas like that anything becomes possible!

That is not the only dodgy part of modern physics. Think of the quark model. It postulates quarks that have fractional charges. They would be wonderful things to play with experimentally, and because of conservation of charge once a quark got inside a piece of matter it would stick around. enormous effort was made to find these things because the maths was/is so 'beautiful'. in the end someone came up with the theory that quarks are bound to one another in such a way that they simply can't escape to infinity.


Many of those fine-tuned parameters come out of potentially suspect physics such as this.

This leaves me with the feeling that we should rely on the excellent chemical evidence that we got here by design.

David

After I had written the above reply to LotusFlower, I stumbled across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_ka0mw6Bo

The video is a bit quirky(!!) but I think it nicely amplifies my doubts about quarks and more generally, the flakey nature of modern physics altogether.

David

After I had written the above reply to LotusFlower, I stumbled across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_ka0mw6Bo

The video is a bit quirky(!!) but I think it nicely amplifies my doubts about quarks and more generally, the flakey nature of modern physics altogether.

David

People like @nbtruthman and @sbu could contribute by watching this video.

David