Anthropic principle and Intelligent Design
Vish Subramanian
subset of those produce viable living creatures. Biologists argue that
natural selection is sufficient to pare down the googolplex of
possibilites, but proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the
complex, fine-tuned and improbable traits of living things are there
because some powerful force made them so.
Arguments relating to the anthropic principle are being made to choose
from a googolplex of string theory landscapes. Can any meaningful
distinction really be made between Intelligent Design and this use of
the anthropic principle?
Vish
Thomas Larsson
> Arguments relating to the anthropic principle are being made to choose
> from a googolplex of string theory landscapes. Can any meaningful
> distinction really be made between Intelligent Design and this use of
> the anthropic principle?
>
This similarity has been observed. Look e.g. at David Gross'
transparancy 60 minutes into
mms://Mv-winmedia.cwru.edu/kavli_cerca_session_8.wmv
(it is the eighth show of
http://www.phys.cwru.edu/events/cerca_video_archive.php ).
It says something like "The AP is dangerous because it smells
from intelligent design" (and something more which I don't
remember).
Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a way to fastforward wmv
files, so getting there takes some patience.
Jeffery
Just because a crackpot takes something in physics, and totally
misinterpretes it, and twists it to make it look like it supports
their crackpot theory does not mean there is any similarity between
the crackpot theory and the original actual theory in physics. For
instance, through an unfortunate linguistic coincidence, the word
"teleportation" appears in "quantum teleportation" which is more than
enough excuse for Star Trek fans to claim that teleportation is
possible. Does that mean that teleportation, as it exists on Star
Trek, is similar to quantum teleportation? Of course not. In quantum
teleportation, not even a single particle is disappearing at one
location and appearing at another location, and you can't even send
information instantly since you have to also send information though a
classical channel.
Another example is when the media pounced on an experiment that
unfortunately used the phrase "faster than light" when really nothing
was traveling faster than light, and this was more than enough execuse
for the faster than light crackpots to announce that faster than light
travel had been achieved.
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/13/9/3
Does this mean that faster than travel in the sense of science
fiction, UFO's, crackpots, etc. was similar to the real experiment
that was done? Of course not. In the real experiment, nothing was
traveling faster than light, in any sense whatsoever, and the phrase
should never have been attached to it.
Similarly, there is absolutely no similarity whatsoever between the
phrase "anthropic principle" as used by physicists, and the phrase
"anthropic principle" as used by creationists. As I said before, an
obvious example of the anthropic principle is that a tiny fraction of
all points in the Universe are as close to a star that we are, so that
would seem that it is very unlikely unlikely that we would be as close
to a star as we are, however that's not true because life would be
much more likely to arise near a star, which explains why we're near a
star. A creationist would say, "It's very unlikely that we would be as
close to a star as we are, so therefore God must have put us here",
which is total nonsense, and has nothing to do with the real anthropic
principle.
Also, I suspect that if David Gross said that, that he was saying it
as a joke. I could easily imagine someone saying that while giving a
lecture during a physics conference, and the entire room would burst
into laughter.
Jeffery Winkler
Peter Woit
>thomas_l...@hotmail.com (Thomas Larsson) wrote in message news:<24a23f36.03111...@posting.google.com>...
>
>
>>This similarity has been observed. Look e.g. at David Gross'
>>transparancy 60 minutes into
>>
>>mms://Mv-winmedia.cwru.edu/kavli_cerca_session_8.wmv
>>
>>(it is the eighth show of
>>http://www.phys.cwru.edu/events/cerca_video_archive.php ).
>>It says something like "The AP is dangerous because it smells
>>from intelligent design" (and something more which I don't
>>remember).
>>
>>Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a way to fastforward wmv
>>files, so getting there takes some patience.
>>
>>
>
>
>Also, I suspect that if David Gross said that, that he was saying it
>as a joke. I could easily imagine someone saying that while giving a
>lecture during a physics conference, and the entire room would burst
>into laughter.
>
>
>
I did watch this video and I can assure you that David Gross was
dead serious about this. One thing to keep in mind is that Lawrence
Krauss, who was the main organizer of that conference and was on
that panel, has been one of the leaders among scientists of the
fight against the teaching of "creationism" or "intelligent design".
Gross was commending Krauss for his efforts and warning other
physicists of the danger to science that "intelligent design" represents.
He was making the point that the distinction between "the
theory is determined by initial conditions, set in some way we
can never understand, such that human life is possible" and
"God created the universe such that human life is possible"
is not a very large one, and is one that creationists will be
very happy to completely ignore.
Thomas Larsson
news:<575262ce.03111...@posting.google.com>...
> Also, I suspect that if David Gross said that, that he was saying it
> as a joke. I could easily imagine someone saying that while giving a
> lecture during a physics conference, and the entire room would burst
> into laughter.
>
Now you missed a golden opportunity to keep quiet, and made me
play the movie again so that I could copy Gross'
transparencies. The punchline is in the last transparency.
Yes, there were laughter in the audience, but when professors
rip each other to pieces they usually do so in a polite manner.
-----------------------------------------------
First transparency: (50:00)
HAWKING: "Extreme Anthropic Principle"
We live in a universe with only 4 dimensions, with the known
values of \Lambda, \alpha, m_u, m_d, \alpha_S, m_\nu, ..... ,
because we have measured them_
< No BD | Present state \Lambda, \alpha, m_u, m_d, \alpha_S, m_\nu, .....>
MESSAGE TO EXPERIMENTALISTS:
DONT MEASURE ANYTHING ELSE, ONCE MEASURED IT MAKES NO SENSE TO
CALCULAGE.
-----------------------------------------------
Second transparency (52:54)
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE ANTHORPIC PRINCIPLE
Requires:
* Many states, 'vacua' components of \Psi, with different
values of \Lambda, \Gamma, \alpha, m_u/m_d,...
* Dynamical mechanism for creating different patches of the
universe. Eternal Inflation.
-----------------------------------------------
Third transparency (53:43)
WHAT ARE THE RULES OF THE A.P. GAME?
- What is the space of parameters?
- What parameters are kept fixed?
- What is necessary for 'life'?
- What are the probability distributions?
A.P. CALCULATIONS ARE INHERENTLY IMPRECISE AND UNIMPROVABLE.
The only way to disprove the AP is to do better and CALCULATE.
-----------------------------------------------
Fourth transparency (57:06)
A.P. IS DEFEATIST
All of atomic physics, condensed matter physics + biology is
reducible to a predictive theory with one parameter \alpha.
A.P. IS DANGEROUS
Smells of religion + intelligent design.
-----------------------------------------------
island
> I did watch this video and I can assure you that David Gross was
> dead serious about this. One thing to keep in mind is that Lawrence
> Krauss, who was the main organizer of that conference and was on
> that panel, has been one of the leaders among scientists of the
> fight against the teaching of "creationism" or "intelligent design".
> Gross was commending Krauss for his efforts and warning other
> physicists of the danger to science that "intelligent design" represents.
> He was making the point that the distinction between "the
> theory is determined by initial conditions, set in some way we
> can never understand, such that human life is possible" and
> "God created the universe such that human life is possible"
> is not a very large one, and is one that creationists will be
> very happy to completely ignore.
So, what?... One would still be required to leap outside of nature to
say that a supernatural entity has fine tuned the universe in such a
manner that intelligent human life is possible. You can't deny them the
conclusions of their "belief", and if they want to say that evidence for
a causal mechanism in nature might also be evidence for a supernatural
mechanism beyond nature, then they should be allowed to on those
grounds, because they are bound by their belief to conclude exactly
that.
Regardless of the precision and probability of the "evidence", there
will always be a leap required to explain natural occurrence by any
other means than natural occurrence, which we already know is the
mechanism for every other occurrence in nature... so, what's new? If
you were to look up and see Gabriel throwing lightning bolts and blowing
his horn while being carried across the sky in a flaming chariot, would
you call that evidence for God, or maybe something else... like a very
clever hoax, or failing that, maybe even some alien life form that
simply has a better grip on physics than us?
Science is not in danger because popular opinion is not a factor. One
of the choices requires a leap outside of nature, and that's what binds
us to something along the lines of the latter two conclusions regardless
of what "evidence" shows up on the doorstep. I'm not sure where David
Gross gets his ideas from anyway, because it's not all about
creationists, and from what I understand about it, (aside from the
obvious religous manuvering), is that some of the proponents are
actually real scientists that are simply open to the possibility that
there may be some explanation other than pure random chance behind the
mechanism, but not necessarily a supernatural entity.
Certainly creationists will latch onto this or any other observations
that we make, (like the second law of thermodynamics, for example), in
an effort to justify their belief, but it might be even worse for
science if we don't at least consider other related possibilities,
because we could very well let the fear of this hinder us from looking
at something that is right in front of our faces. Without making a
leap, the hardest proof for intelligent design in nature is at its best
still only proof that there is some method to nature's madness, which
might not be so far fetched if you don't leap beyond nature's basic
entropic nature in order to find the answer, just as a "for example".
Maybe we should just concentrate on getting back to science ourselves,
and quit letting our personal prejudices influence our ability to look
anywhere near other possibilities, like similar possibilities that might
just explain a whole lot, because all the "evidence" in the world isn't
going to change the way that some zealots will interpret it anyway, and
it would be a damning contradiction to all that we stand for, if out of
fear, we close our minds to all related possibilities by becoming
equally anti-fanatical about one, like Krauss and Gross "appear" to be.
Lubos Motl
> I did watch this video and I can assure you that David Gross was
> dead serious about this. One thing to keep in mind is that Lawrence...
David Gross usually shows his charm and humour when he describes important
topics, but I agree that he was serious about these statements. And let
me mention that I agree with him.
> He was making the point that the distinction between "the
> theory is determined by initial conditions, set in some way we
> can never understand, such that human life is possible" and
> "God created the universe such that human life is possible"
> is not a very large one, and is one that creationists will be
> very happy to completely ignore.
It's a very good point, too. Except for some emotional differences, these
two mental frameworks are more or less equivalent as far as their effect
on physics goes. The people who say that the second sentence is much worse
are just cheaply attacking the word "God". But physics is essentially the
same in both cases. Well, it might hypothetically happen that some
properties of the Universe will never have a fully quantitative, rational
explanation, but we simply should not give up.
A guy was comparing the anthropic principle with the evolution in biology.
It might be a good comparison, but it is probably misleading because in
biology, one knows very well what the rules of the game are. The
unsuccessful species are physically eliminated. We know how should we
count the individuals and so on. In the case of the anthropic principle,
we don't know what the measure really is (what is the number of
intelligent observers in a given Universe - the quantity that should
probably define the probability distribution) - and the wrong Universes
don't physically disappear.
______________________________________________________________________________
E-mail: lu...@matfyz.cz fax: +1-617/496-0110 Web: http://lumo.matfyz.cz/
phone: work: +1-617/496-8199 home: +1-617/868-4487
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Superstring/M-theory is the language in which God wrote the world.
Peter Woit
>Maybe we should just concentrate on getting back to science ourselves,
>and quit letting our personal prejudices influence our ability to look
>anywhere near other possibilities, like similar possibilities that might
>just explain a whole lot, because all the "evidence" in the world isn't
>going to change the way that some zealots will interpret it anyway, and
>it would be a damning contradiction to all that we stand for, if out of
>fear, we close our minds to all related possibilities by becoming
>equally anti-fanatical about one, like Krauss and Gross "appear" to be.
>
>
>
What's at issue here is what "science" is. Gross is making the rather
incendiary claim that many of his colleagues are no longer doing
science. If you devote your life to studying and promoting a theory
that is inherently incapable of ever predicting anything, then, whatever
you are doing, it is not science. He thinks some of his colleagues have
finally gone too far in terms of making excuses for not being able to
make predictions. I agree, but think that both he and they should stop
making excuses for why string theory doesn't work and get on with the
difficult task of finding something else that does.
Boris Borcic
>
> ...
> in biology, one knows very well what the rules of the game are. The
> unsuccessful species are physically eliminated. We know how should we
> count the individuals and so on.
I am not convinced. It is the case in biology we can devise -hugely
simplified- population genetics models of evolutionary dynamics s.t. we
understand the intended mapping to natural individuals and individual types,
and they display "survival of the fittest" at work. But if we look at actual
case studies intended to validate the models, we have to admit that they don't
sample "the sector of Nature" that we claim to explain this way. Given the
place of population genetics in the science/religion debate (as a debunker of
"finalistic" intuitions), of particular note is that the probability that
parametrize the evolution equations in the abstract model, can not in general
be measured in advance of the evolution in the case of a concrete model.
> We know how should we
> count the individuals and so on.
While they may seem peripheral and irrepresentative, I believe the most
interesting cases of evolution at work, display exactly as feature that
otherwise equivalent, rather natural manners, of counting individuals of some
type, diverge.
The simplest case is that of "ring species" of birds that at some locations
appear as a pair of bona-fide distinct species, but s.t., when setting one's
attention on one of these species and following its individuals through
gradual variations over its geographical range, one ends up with the other
species after a closed loop. I am sure the readers of spr would know how to
formulate this in the jargon of topology.
One well-understood case is batesian mimicry. There we have apparent
individual butterfly species featuring geographical variation of the
"plumage", that are in fact a collection of distinct genetic species. At each
location the individuals of the different species look the same, while their
common model changes from one place to the next. This later feature justifies
to recognize autonomous existence of the phenotypic model as a real entity, in
the sense that the natural nutshell description of the situation created by
batesian mimicry involves the interaction, with predatory birds, of what
*really* looks like a single species - up to a feature that is not relevant to
that interaction with the birds (= predictive power to the "appearance" !).
Another much more tantalizing and mysterious case is the Anableps fish, that
according to defensibly natural procedures for counting eyes and sexes, enjoys
a count of 4 instead of 2, in both cases. Put this way, the fish reads like
the suggestion of a symmetry mapping eyes to sexes and conversely, except for
the 4 eyes and the 4 sexes not appearing in the "same appartment of the case
description building", so to say. The challenge is to refactor enough of the
building to find a global symmetry that will swap the apartments. That the
main predators are again birds, shows promise of a relationship with the
previous case.
This is to say that a different treatment of evolution theory, centering on
apparently monstrous or extreme cases, and trying to relate them to each other
as acrobatic variants, imho shows promise as a target to map the proverbial
elephant of M-theory to the biosphere, while mapping the "superstring duality
areas" to such cases. Perhaps not as a strictly scientific *conclusion*, but
at least as a worthy metaphor to evaluate the sort of distance that can exist
from superstring dualities to a positive M-theory.
> Superstring/M-theory is the language in which God wrote the world.
Well, the world God wrote centers on the biosphere, aha !
Regards, Boris Borcic
--
python >>> filter(lambda W : W not in "ILLITERATE","BULLSHIT")
Uncle Al
Vish Subramanian wrote:
>
> Genes can come in a googolplex of possible varieties, but only a small
> subset of those produce viable living creatures.
That's rather wishy-washy. One must tread carefully before concluding
there is no signal in a set of apparent noise - parasitic,
commensalist, and symbiotic organisms (re distributed frequency ro
spread band communication). The terrestrial biome is only a small
subset of self-replicating life chemistries within our light cone.
A little bit of life goes an awfully long way - only requiring a
surprisingly few genes to pull it off as a minimal basis set -
including single genes that code for more than one protein by
frame-shift reading. There is some wild and hairy stuff out there.
In the lab, t-RNAs expanded beyond the 21 protein amino acids and
peptide nucleic acids show that what we see today is a trivially small
expression of what could easily be.
> Biologists argue that
> natural selection is sufficient to pare down the googolplex of
> possibilites,
What makes you think everything comes together with maximum stochastic
expression? Organic chemistry is very good at selectively giving
products. A fraction of a kcal/mole can make all the difference in
the world. The prebiotic soup was definitely NOT random in
composition. Urey-Ponnamperuma-Miller experiments demonstrate that on
a benchtop. The Japanese made a major industry out of adenosine
abiotic synthesis via primordial HCN chemistry.
> but proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the
> complex, fine-tuned and improbable traits of living things are there
> because some powerful force made them so.
That is explicit idiocy. Who moves the Prime Mover? If it fell
together la-de-dah you are back were you started. Panspermia is the
same garbage. You are always stuck with trying to explain the first
instance.
> Arguments relating to the anthropic principle are being made to choose
> from a googolplex of string theory landscapes. Can any meaningful
> distinction really be made between Intelligent Design and this use of
> the anthropic principle?
There is no room or place for god(s) in equations. If String theory
cannot weight its allowable solutions to selectively obtain physically
realistic models or cannot demonstrate an acceptable alternative
reality, String theory is mere philosophy not science. If you want
your toilet to flush, it had better respect empirical constraints.
History is rich with non-technological and technology-denying
societies. Neolithic Amerindians were scythed by guys on horses with
knives and guns. China had gunpowder early on but Europe had guns
when it mattered. Superlative Japanese folded steel blades wielded by
swordmasters were no match for crappy flintlocks in the hands of
ruffians after their 17th century isolation was forcibly ended.
Locally fearsome Polish cavalry was a joke compared to Nazi tanks and
bombers. The Japanese were willing to lose every man and woman - to
"eat stones" - in a last ditch defense of the homeland against US
invasion. Curtis LeMay melted all but seven Japanense cities and
still they refused to surrender. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and they
surrendered. Detroit denied W. Edwards Deming, statistical quality
control, and continuous improvement. The Japanese worshipped Deming
and reamed Detroit a big one.
(Had WWII Japanese bombed Hawaiian tank farms and ignored everything
else, the Pacific war would have been very different. As it is, they
left the irreplaceable fuel untouched and only damaged obsolete
fungible hardware while pissing off all of Congress and the nation.
It was a small tactical victory and an enormous strategic blunder.)
Those who do not embrace a demonstrably good physical model of the
universe exist at the mercy of those who do.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm
(Do something naughty to physics)
Lubos Motl
On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Peter Woit wrote:
> What's at issue here is what "science" is. Gross is making the rather
> incendiary claim that many of his colleagues are no longer doing
> science.
David Gross is a leading figure both of conventional particle physics
based on point-like particles, as well as a leading figure of string
theory. He has been cited more than 20,000 times, for example. David Gross
has made essential contributions to QCD - the theory that explains most of
the phenomena that we observe on the accelerators today (and it is still
generally expected that these contributions will be awarded the Nobel
prize in near future) - but he has also written a plenty of important
papers on string theory, and I don't think that he is trying to quit. As
the director of KITP in Santa Barbara, he is responsible for a lot of
administrative issues, but it can't prevent him from thinking about
science.
There are several well-known physicists who were active 30 years ago and
they are still active, but there exists a perspective from which David
Gross is special.
> If you devote your life to studying and promoting ...
Even if one "forgets" about the hundreds of papers and talks that David
Gross wrote and gave about string theory, his contributions to physics
will be huge. But there is of course absolutely no reason to "remove" his
string theory papers because many of them are very important and amazing.
> ... a theory that is inherently incapable of ever predicting anything,
> then, whatever you are doing, it is not science.
String theory is by its nature the most predictive theory we ever had.
It is also important to re-iterate that string theory is not the only
theory in whose development David Gross has played an important role.
David Gross' opinions about science were always completely rational, very
pragmatic, and realistic. The recent years have showed deep interrelations
between theories like QCD - that David Gross studied before he became a
string theorist - and string theory. Two main Gross' passions have
converged.
David Gross certainly has the credits and the moral right to criticize
many other scientists.
> I agree, but think that both he and they should stop making excuses
> for why string theory doesn't work ...
String theory works great, and therefore there is no reason to make
excuses "why string theory does not work". Maybe you confused string
theory with something else? You would have to be more concrete and careful
and correct all your typos because what you wrote makes absolutely no
sense. Only when you write something meaningful, there can be a meaningful
discussion about that.
> ... and get on with the difficult task of finding something else that
> does.
There is probably no other theory of quantum gravity that works, and
therefore it would not be too reasonable to look for it. Physicists can
follow different directions: if you think that people should try to look
for a theory that according to our opinion can't exist, why don't you do
it yourself? David Gross has decided that his time is too expensive to do
things like that.
______________________________________________________________________________
E-mail: lu...@matfyz.cz fax: +1-617/496-0110 Web: http://lumo.matfyz.cz/
phone: work: +1-617/496-8199 home: +1-617/868-4487
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Peter Woit
>David Gross is a leading figure both of conventional particle physics
>based on point-like particles, as well as a leading figure of string
>theory. He has been cited more than 20,000 times, for example.
Independently of how many time he has been cited, Gross is a great
physicist, and will richly deserve the Nobel prize he should soon get
for the discovery of asymptotic freedom. I'm very glad that he is
criticizing the absurd "anthropic" abandonment of science by some
string theorists. It would be an extremely disturbing situation if he
wasn't.
>String theory is by its nature the most predictive theory we ever had.
This sentence only makes some sort of sense if reinterpreted as "if
string theory ever does everything we hope it will do, it will then be
the most predictive theory we ever had".
>String theory works great, and therefore there is no reason to make
>excuses "why string theory does not work".
Again, I think you mean "if string theory ever does everything we hope
it will do, then string theory works great". You're continually
confusing the theory that you hope exists with the one you've got, which
doesn't work so great.
island
Peter Woit wrote:
> What's at issue here is what "science" is. Gross is making the rather
> incendiary claim that many of his colleagues are no longer doing
> science. If you devote your life to studying and promoting a theory
> that is inherently incapable of ever predicting anything, then, whatever
> you are doing, it is not science. He thinks some of his colleagues have
> finally gone too far in terms of making excuses for not being able to
> make predictions. I agree, but think that both he and they should stop
> making excuses for why string theory doesn't work and get on with the
> difficult task of finding something else that does.
The overlap is going to make my head pop, but the rationale which
applies to string theory does not necessarily work elsewhere. I made my
point in too general of terms because I really didn't intend to bring
this into this conversation, but by arguing against intelligent design,
he argues against the anthropic principle as the default "landscape"
that is called for "IF" nature shows an entropic preference to
intelligent life as a "superior" means for entropic efficiency via the
Principle of Least "ultimate" Action.
This justifies how and why the constants of an expanding universe must
be fine tuned in the manner in which they are, and so an anthropic
preference to humans must be the default "landscape" in whatever theory
works. This defines a universal connection between the evolution of the
universe and the evolution of humans, where "Punctuated Equilibria" ends
when tension between whatever relevant opposing evolutionary tendencies
within the preferred species causes it to leap to a higher order of
entropic efficiency.
From that perspective, arguing against intelligent design is like trying
to argue against nature.
Jeffery
thomas_l...@hotmail.com (Thomas Larsson) wrote in message news:<24a23f36.03111...@posting.google.com>...
> reducible to a predictive theory with one parameter \alpha.
>
> A.P. IS DANGEROUS
>
> Smells of religion + intelligent design.
>
Well this one line at the very end of the talk, it sounds like he
wasn't making near as much of an analogy between the anthropic
principle and religion as people here are claiming. From this one
line, it doesn't sound like he was really serious. It sounds like the
anti-string people are pouncing on this, and making way to big a deal
of it. Just that one single line at the very end of the talk sounds
like he's saying "Beware you don't go to far". It was just a word of
warning, not that the anthropic principle itself was intrinsically
bad. Then people on this newsgroup are using that as a excuse to try
to equate anthropic principle with religion, or even to try to equate
string theory with religion.
The anthropic principle merely states that you have a large number of
vacua, a tiny percentage of which would allow life, and obviously we
would have to be in one of those. There is absolutely nothing
supernatural about it. How can you possibly equate that to saying that
a supernatural creature magically made the universe and everything in
it? There's no basis of comparison.
Also string theory and the anthropic principle are predictive, and
explain why we observe what we do, since obviously we would have to be
in a universe or part of the universe that would allow us to exist.
It's explains why we are in the string theory vacua we are, since
otherwise we wouldn't be here. Religion does not explain anything at
all, because it's magic, which is the impossible, and has no
explanation, and shouldn't be discussed in this newsgroup.
Also, I looked up that so-called four eyed fish, and really, it has
two eyes and two sexes.
Jeffery Winkler
Thomas Larsson
> thomas_l...@hotmail.com (Thomas Larsson) wrote in message news:<24a23f36.03111...@posting.google.com>...
> > All of atomic physics, condensed matter physics + biology is
> > reducible to a predictive theory with one parameter \alpha.
> >
> > A.P. IS DANGEROUS
> >
> > Smells of religion + intelligent design.
> >
>
> Well this one line at the very end of the talk, it sounds like he
> wasn't making near as much of an analogy between the anthropic
> principle and religion as people here are claiming.
It wasn't a talk, it was a ten-minute comment on Hawking's talk,
and that comment was all about the problems with anthropic reasoning.
You have the reference, why don't you check it out instead of making
claims based on guesses about what Gross said?
> From this one
> line, it doesn't sound like he was really serious. It sounds like the
> anti-string people are pouncing on this, and making way to big a deal
> of it. Just that one single line at the very end of the talk sounds
> like he's saying "Beware you don't go to far". It was just a word of
> warning, not that the anthropic principle itself was intrinsically
> bad. Then people on this newsgroup are using that as a excuse to try
> to equate anthropic principle with religion, or even to try to equate
> string theory with religion.
>
Lubos Motl <mo...@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.31.031119...@feynman.harvard.edu>...
> "Edward
> definitely hates the anthropic principle".
Thomas Larsson
> On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Peter Woit wrote:
> > I did watch this video and I can assure you that David Gross was
> > dead serious about this. One thing to keep in mind is that Lawrence...
> David Gross usually shows his charm and humour when he describes important
> topics, but I agree that he was serious about these statements. And let
> me mention that I agree with him.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand your position at all here. You say that
you agree with Gross that the anthropic principle is dangerous, because it
smells from religion and intelligent design. But you also said, very recently,
that you agree with Witten that an anthropic principle could account for the
fine tuning and hierarchies that plague the Standard Model. Can you really
have it both ways?
Aaron Bergman
thomas_l...@hotmail.com (Thomas Larsson) wrote:
Sure.
Nobody likes the anthropic principle. Not even Lenny.
But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
It would suck if it were correct, but, alas, no one has shown a lack of
suckiness to be a fundamental principle of nature.
Aaron
Lubos Motl
> This similarity has been observed. Look e.g. at David Gross'
> transparancy 60 minutes into
>
> mms://Mv-winmedia.cwru.edu/kavli_cerca_session_8.wmv
That's an amazingly entertaining discussion! Although Hawking, Weinberg
and others make some points that are good or might be good under some
circumstances, I really loved David Gross' amusing explanation why the
anthropic principle is a defeatist virus that destroys the physicists for
good, a dangerous disease that smells of religion and tells us to tell the
experimentalists that they should not measure anything new, and it would
have stopped science at many moments in the past.
> It says something like "The AP is dangerous because it smells
> from intelligent design" (and something more which I don't
> remember).
It is definitely a correct analogy, and the only material difference is
that the proponents of the anthropic principle don't attend the churches
as often as the other proponents of the intelligent design. Well, of
course, the intelligent design or anthropic people could be correct about
some questions, but one should only admit such possibilities only when a
better theory - that explains a large number of other things - exists.
As someone else said, the anthropic reasoning is just a way to spend our
time when we have no better approach to calculate the parameters of the
Universe.
> Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a way to fastforward wmv
> files, so getting there takes some patience.
In Windows Media Player, you just click at the bar that moves to indicate
the position within the movie, and drag it elsewhere. You must wait for
half a minute and wait while it is buffering.
Alfred Einstead
jeffery...@mail.com (Jeffery) wrote:
> The anthropic principle merely states that you have a large number of
> vacua, a tiny percentage of which would allow life, and obviously we
> would have to be in one of those.
Of course, a major problem with that is that "life" itself is just
an abstraction that applies to complex systems. Even then
it has no clear definition. In particular, one can envision
such exotica as a "Neuron Star" (originating from famous Sci. Fi.
writer Damien Broderick: an intelligence densely packed
sufficiently much to form a neutron star, using quark matter as
a computational substrate), an "Omegon" (which can even get as
dense as a black hole; originating from Vic Stenger, possibly
one and the same an the infrequent poster here by the same
name), a "Jupiter Brain" (a single planet-scale intelligent being,
like the Internet is evolving into), a "Borganism" (a single
organism formed like the Borg, like the Internet is evolving
into, too), etc.
The Earth, itself, is a complex system that exhibits many of
the properties attributed to the term "life". I'm sure
stellar dynamics also exhibits complex modes that could also
be brought under the header.
Kevin A. Scaldeferri
In article <abergman-841B1F.01014824112003@localhost>,
Aaron Bergman <aber...@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
>Nobody likes the anthropic principle. Not even Lenny.
>
>But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
>
>It would suck if it were correct
I would have replaced "correct" with "necessary" and "wrong" with
"unnecessary".
At least in it's weak form, as I usually think of it, the anthropic
principle is tautologous. All it says it that there exists a data
point, which is that we exist, and that nature must be consistent with
this.
There are various stronger formulations, but they are all philosophy
or religion.
--
======================================================================
Kevin Scaldeferri Calif. Institute of Technology
The INTJ's Prayer:
Lord keep me open to others' ideas, WRONG though they may be.
Lubos Motl
> I'm sorry, but I don't understand your position at all here. You say that
> you agree with Gross that the anthropic principle is dangerous, because it
> smells from religion and intelligent design. But you also said, very recently,
> that you agree with Witten that an anthropic principle could account for the
> fine tuning and hierarchies that plague the Standard Model. Can you really
> have it both ways?
I think that you misunderstood everything. Witten hates the anthropic
principle just like Gross (or me) - I used the word "hates" because this
is how we were told about Witten's emotions by Juan Maldacena.
If you think that Witten is in the opposite camp than Gross, you really
missed the point. The logical possibility that some parameters may
eventually be properties of the environment (and my guess is that Gross
would agree that it is a "logical possibility") does not change anything
about the fact that neither of us wants this comment to be accepted as the
final explanation.
island
>
> In article <abergman-841B1F.01014824112003@localhost>,
> Aaron Bergman <aber...@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:
> >
> >Nobody likes the anthropic principle. Not even Lenny.
> >
> >But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
> >
> >It would suck if it were correct
>
> I would have replaced "correct" with "necessary" and "wrong" with
> "unnecessary".
>
> At least in it's weak form, as I usually think of it, the anthropic
> principle is tautologous. All it says it that there exists a data
> point, which is that we exist, and that nature must be consistent with
> this.
>
> There are various stronger formulations, but they are all philosophy
> or religion.
I disagree only if given that the underlying direction of all action in
a big bang induced expanding universe is ultimately entropic. Any
occurrence within the system is, therfore, a result of the tuning of the
constants that were set at t=10^-43 . This includes humans in all their
glory, and the weak argument would support this via the fact that it is
observationally proven that the human is one of nature's more preferred
methods for satisfying the second law of thermodynamics.
Humans represent a very efficient path of entropic action, and so the
need for human efficiency has pre-existed since the big bang occurred,
and there is nothing philosophical about that. In fact, it would
require an unfounded philosophical assumption to conclude anything else.
Aaron Bergman
ke...@its.caltech.edu (Kevin A. Scaldeferri) wrote:
> In article <abergman-841B1F.01014824112003@localhost>,
> Aaron Bergman <aber...@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:
> >
> >Nobody likes the anthropic principle. Not even Lenny.
> >
> >But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
> >
> >It would suck if it were correct
>
> I would have replaced "correct" with "necessary" and "wrong" with
> "unnecessary".
Sorry. What I meant was that it would suck if anthropic explanations of
the fundamental constants (and the like) were correct.
Aaron
Jeffery
Followups should either be about physics or be moved to private
email. -usc]
whop...@csd.uwm.edu (Alfred Einstead) wrote in message news:<e58d56ae.03112...@posting.google.com>...
Life can be defined as a physical object which at some point in its
existence is at capable of reproduction, which is making a copy of
itself. Most of the examples you give would not be life, according to
this definition, because they are not capable of reproduction. For
instance, even if you had a neutron star that was intelligent, how
would it reproduce? Therefore it would not be alive even if it was
intelligent. Also, if they can't reproduce, where would they come
from? If they can't reproduce, they could not have evolved into their
current state of intelligence, so how could this intelligence have
formed in the first place? No known naturally occuring process could
create an intelligent neutron star. This still allows the possibility
of one being artificially created by an extremely advanced
civilization, but that civilization would be made up of traditional
biological life forms, so the universe would still have to take a form
that would allow normal life to exist, in order for it to be possible
for the intelligent neutron star to be constructed. You were using the
word "life" to mean "sentient being" which are totally different
concepts. Bacteria is alive but obviously it's not intelligent. Of
course the only sentient beings currently in existence, which are
humans, and possibly apes, are also alive, although science fiction
writers can imagine sentient beings that aren't alive.
Anyway, all the strange intelligent beings you mentioned are still
assumed to exist in a universe similar to ours, with the basic laws of
physics, particles, forces, interactions similar as in our universe.
Therefore, this is still consistent with saying that life, and thus
also non-living sentient beings that can only be created by
intelligent life, are much more likely in a universe similar to ours.
Jeffery Winkler
Borcis
Kevin A. Scaldeferri wrote:
>
> At least in it's weak form, as I usually think of it, the anthropic
> principle is tautologous. All it says it that there exists a data
> point, which is that we exist, and that nature must be consistent with
> this.
>
> There are various stronger formulations, but they are all philosophy
> or religion.
A point is that the "data point" is actually a rich piece of data
- arguably infinitely rich - and that whatever theory of nature we
want to constrain from it, selects a particular abstraction out of
it. Opportunistically using AP as a last resort for theories we don't
manage to complete to our liking without it, leads us to an uncontrolled
sample of such abstractions; -if- we admit it has a place (over the one
you point out, of an eg redundant tautology) for better balance shouldn't we
try to contemplate for itself, the space of abstractions of the fact that we
exist, that may plausibly constrain some (unbound variable) theory of
observable nature ?
Regards, Boris Borcic
--
"L'anthropie met un terme aux dynamiques"
Italo Vecchi
> shouldn't we
> try to contemplate for itself, the space of abstractions of the fact that we
> exist, that may plausibly constrain some (unbound variable) theory of
> observable nature ?
>
as follows. The Universe we perceive is the universe of our
perceptions, i.e. the universe of measurement outcomes of the
measurement operators that define us as observers. Our perspective is
anthropic because it is built on an anthropic reference system, i.e.
the pointer basis relative to our operators. Obviously in such a
perspective there is a place for us, i.e. for the observers that
determine it. This does not mean that the universe's wave function is
anthropic. It just means that the way our perceptions/measurements
are construed is anthropic.
It may be added that at the root the anthropic principle are certain
facts that appear "a priori" very improbable. This begs the question:
what is probability?
If probabilty is interpreted à la DeFinetti, as a measure of the
observer's knowlege, then what we are saying is just that our model
needs fine-tuning to be effective.
Italo Vecchi
Italo Vecchi
> try to contemplate for itself, the space of abstractions of the fact that we
> exist, that may plausibly constrain some (unbound variable) theory of
> observable nature ?
>
Where I live a popular "explanation" of the anthropic principle goes
as follows. The Universe we perceive is the universe of our
perceptions, i.e. the universe of measurement outcomes of the
measurement operators that define us as observers. Our perspective is
anthropic because it is built on an anthropic reference system, i.e.
the pointer basis relative to our operators. Obviously in such a
perspective there is a place for us, i.e. for the observers that
determine it. This does not mean that the universe's wave function is
anthropic. It just means that the way we construe our
perceptions/measurements is.
It may be added that at the root the anthropic principle is the
perplexing fact that certain facts appear "a priori" very
improbable. This begs the question: what is probability?
If probabilty is interpreted à la DeFinetti, as a measure of the
observer's knowlege, then what we are saying is just that our model
needs our fine-tuning to be effective.
Regards,
Italo Vecchi