The multiverse: science's assisted suicide?

Article:

For many people today, post-modern science is more of a quest to express an identity as believer in science, irrespective of evidence. Cosmologist Paul Steinhardt got a sense of this in 2014, when he reported that some proponents of early rapid cosmic inflation “already insist that the theory is equally valid whether or not gravitational waves are detected.” It fulfilled their needs. In 2017, cosmologist George Ellis, long a foe of post-modern cosmology, summed it up: “Scientific theories have since the seventeenth century been held tight by an experimental leash. In the last twenty years or so, both string theory and theories of the multiverse have slipped the leash.”

We have so much more data now. But it provides no evidence for a multiverse. 
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Eugene Lim insisted at The Conversation in 2015 that parallel universes are science: “Whether we will ever be able to prove their existence is hard to predict. But given the massive implications of such a finding (note: like an "explanation" for fine tuning) it should definitely be worth the search.” Very well, but some people research ghosts on the same basis. What makes the multiverse quest “science” but the ghost hunt “anti-science,” once evidence no longer matters as much as it used to? (note: there actually is significant evidence for ghosts, apparitions, and so on, unlike the multiverse)
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The multiverse has only ever existed, so far as we know, in the mind of man. Its most promising research programs, string theory and early rapid cosmic inflation theory, have bounced along on enthusiasm alone, prompting ever more arcane speculations for which there may never be any possibility of evidence.

But like so many other empty ideas, the multiverse has consequences. If we accept it, we abandon the view that science deals with the observed facts of nature. We adopt the view that it tells us what we want to believe about ourselves. In other words, the multiverse is science’s assisted suicide.

The cosmological fine-tuning of the laws of physics is incontrovertible, and this gives astrophysicists and other naturalism-worshipping scientists teleological nightmares. So they come up with crazy ideas like the Multiverse. They don’t seem to realize that this fanciful theory just multiplies the explanatory deficit and corresponding origins problem immeasurably relative to just one universe - our own. The Multiverse and cosmic inflation constitutes a vastly larger more complex domain, containing vastly more complex specified information, starting with innumerable other local sets of laws of physics, and most importantly, the meta-laws of physics that govern the cosmic inflation process itself and this immensely greater reality.

You would think that these researchers would realize that these meta-laws must themselves be fine-tuned, in order to achieve the teleology-free meta-universe they are looking for. But there’s no free lunch (apologies to Dembski).

It seems that the Multiverse-espousing scientists have just traded a terminal headache for the original upset stomach.

Two conclusive reasons why the multiverse is massively anti-scientific:

"The multiverse is not only unscientific, it is positively anti-scientific. If there are an incomprehensibly vast (I believe some say even infinite, though that is hard to conceptualize) number of universes, then any being or phenomenon (or its absence) can be explained by “we just happen to live in the universe in which, by sheer dumb luck, that being or phenomenon (or its absence) was instantiated.” This boils down to: “Anything and everything can be explained as the result of sheer dumb luck.

I take it that science is the search for causes upon which predictions can be based. For example, in the movie Apollo 13, NASA scientists calculated the exact number of seconds the astronauts needed to burn their engine in order to propel the module to intercept the earth. This calculation was based on a prediction derived from the laws of gravity. The explanation “we just happen to be in the universe where by sheer dumb luck this being or phenomenon was instantiated” is, from a scientific perspective, identical to “this pattern of sand and detritus resulted from random forces of wind and waives.” Even if it is true, it is scientifically trivial."

In fact, with the multiverse the "sheer dumb luck" explanation for anything is just as good as the Newton's laws type of explanation, so there is not even any reason to even bother to look for an analytical law-based explanation for anything.

"The multiverse is also anti-scientific on another related but independent ground. It seems obvious that the “we just happen to be in the universe where by sheer dumb luck this being or phenomenon was instantiated” explanation may be invoked to explain absolutely anything. And it if that is true, it is also obvious that an explanation that “explains” everything, in fact explains nothing. Why? Because the same “explanation” for a being or phenomenon could be used to explain both the existence of the being or phenomenon and the non-existence of the being or phenomenon at that same time. Thus, with respect to any phenomenon X, resort to “we just happen to live in the universe where phenomenon X occurs” explains the existence of the observed phenomenon. But if phenomenon X were not observed, “we just happen to live in the universe where phenomenon X fails to occur” has equal explanatory value."

Wolfgang Pauli had a long fascination with the fine structure constant and said that when he died the first question he would ask the devil is why: 137? On his deathbed, Pauli found himself in hospital room #137... a coincidence which disturbed him.

137 is the 33rd prime number...

Wolfgang Pauli had a long fascination with the fine structure constant and said that when he died the first question he would ask the devil is why: 137? On his deathbed, Pauli found himself in hospital room #137... a coincidence which disturbed him.

137 is the 33rd prime number...

That story about Pauli and room 137 was included in a really interesting book I read about the scientists of that era, the coincidences (synchronicities) which brought them together and the influence of kabala on their discoveries.The book includes many of the luminaries of the time including Bohr, Freud, Jung, Eddington and many others. According to the account in the book (which is, what might be termed a dramatised history in TV terms - something like Wolf Hall, for example - in that conversations and other details are dramatised but the history remains faithful) Pauli was not merely disturbed, he believe the room number confirmed his coming demise. He did, in fact, die in that room, of course.

The book, I should mention, is called Triad, by Tom Keve. 

https://www.amazon.com/Triad-Physicists-...0953621901

An amusing essay on some of the problems of multiverse theories:

Why Most Atheists Believe in Pink Unicorns

"...We are left with three apparent facts of cosmology:

The universe had a beginning.
It will have no end (but will grow cold and lifeless).
The laws and constants of the universe are filled with anthropic coincidences.

I once asked an atheist friend what he does with these facts.  His response was to appeal to the possibility that there are an infinite number of such universes.  As with the oscillating universe theory, we just happen to be in one of the lucky jackpot universes.
 
This “multiverse” theory turns out to be the view of most every atheist with which I have debated"

Some implications of an infinite realm where anything and everything not logically impossible not only can happen, but has happened, in fact an infinite number of times:

"Since we know that horses are possible, and that pink animals are possible, and that horned animals are possible, then there is no logical reason why pink unicorns are not possible entities.  Ergo, if infinite universes exist, then pink unicorns must necessarily exist.  For an atheist to appeal to multiverse theory to deny the need of a designer infers that he believes in that theory more than a theistically suggested single universe.  And to believe in the multiverse means that one is saddled with everything that goes with it, like pink unicorns.  (Note: also including an infinite number of Boltzmann brains and Godlike beings) 

In fact, they not only believe in pink unicorns, but that someone just like them is riding on one at this very moment, and who believes that elephants, giraffes, and zebras are merely childish fairytales."

An amusing essay on some of the problems of multiverse theories:

Why Most Atheists Believe in Pink Unicorns


Some implications of an infinite realm where anything and everything not logically impossible not only can happen, but has happened, in fact an infinite number of times:

I read the essay but can't see anywhere where it actually points out problems with the concept of a multiverse. The only point it seemed to try to make was that "therefore there's a christian style god somewhere". Yeah, that's true, but so what? Am I supposed to care about said god just because they exist somewhere? Is that what the article's point is?

I read the essay but can't see anywhere where it actually points out problems with the concept of a multiverse. The only point it seemed to try to make was that "therefore there's a christian style god somewhere". Yeah, that's true, but so what? Am I supposed to care about said god just because they exist somewhere? Is that what the article's point is?

The author does point out that "...it should be noted that the belief in them (infinite multiverses) does not logically invalidate atheism.  There theoretically could be multiple universes and there theoretically could be pink unicorns." The author merely points out the obvious reductio ad absurdum aspect of infinite multiverse notions -  "a form of argument that attempts either to disprove a statement by showing it inevitably leads to a ridiculous, absurd, or impractical conclusion, or to prove one by showing that if it were not true, the result would be absurd or impossible." (Wiki)

I'm not sure a single universe is theistically suggestive, at least not in the way the author seems to think?

The argument suggesting design cuts both ways, because one can look at both the improbable constants needed for life while also commenting on all the flaws.

OTOH, one can make arguments toward the God of Philosophers, the Prime Mover / Active Intellect,  but it's very hard to move from such a being toward a "God" of Scripture.

I found an interesting probabilistic and observational argument for the invalidity and impossibility of a multiverse such as envisioned with Hugh Everett's multiple worlds hypothesis solution to quantum mechanics. From https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/w...ematician/:

"Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1 in 10^10(123), an inconceivable small probability. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1 in 10^10(60), a vastly miniscule number, but still inconceivably larger than 1 in 10^10(123). ...Or again, if our universe is but one member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since these are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range. Observable universes like those strange worlds are simply much more plenteous in the ensemble of universes than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us if the universe were but a random member of a multiverse of worlds. Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. It is therefore highly probable that there is no infinite or incalculably large multiverse. — Penrose puts it bluntly “these world ensemble hypotheses are worse than useless in explaining the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe”.