The Ratio 1 (one) part to 10^120 parts Means Design?

[Ron Dean]

According to Professor Leonard Susskind the term
cosmological constant invented by Einstein which is
like an anti-gravity force has a very tiny value - of
..0000000...(120) zeros..001.or 2, but this force also
called black energy is the cause of the increasing
expansion of our universe. Had this energy been even
slightly different the universe would have expanded
too fast or too slow for stars and galaxies to form
consequently, there could have been no heavy elements
and no life.
According to Dr Susskind, the value of this constant
could not vary more than 1 (one) part in 10 ^120 parts.
>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4T2Ulv48nw
>
However, Dr susskind turns to the multiverse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILwxUXbg_8

Who is Dr Leonard Susskind?

Leonard Susskind (/ˈsʌskɪnd/; born 1940)[2][3] is an American physicist,
who is professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and
founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His
research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum
statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology.[1] He is a member of the US
National Academy of Sciences,[4] and the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences,[5] an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter
Institute for Theoretical Physics,[6] and a distinguished professor of
the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.[7]

Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.[8]
He was the first to give a precise string-theoretic interpretation of
the holographic principle in 1995[9] and the first to introduce the idea
of the string theory landscape in 2003.[10][11]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskindlein Medal[13].

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
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[Bill Rogers]

Either there's a God who fine-tuned the universe to make it come out just the way it did, or there's some physics we don't understand yet. I know where my bet is.

[Don Cates]

This is a copy of a post by Steve Carlip pertinent to this topic.

----------------***-----------------
[jillery]
> Some people use "fine tuning" to mean some physical constants can't
> vary their extant value without causing such dramatic changes, that
> life or even the universe itself could not exist.  Based on that,
> they infer these values had to have been purposefully set by an
> intelligent Agent, in order to create a universe that would allow
> life.

> My understanding is that such an inference is based on other
> assumptions.  Some of them are that the extant values could be
> anything else,  and that other physical constants could not adjust
> to compensate.  These assumptions can't be tested at this time.

That's right, but there's another assumption that comes even earlier:
that we know the right way to ask the question.

Let me give a simple example, for the case of the cosmological constant,
which I'll call L (short for the usual "Lambda").  It's often said that
L has a value (in certain "natural" units) of 10^{-120}, and that it
were slightly larger -- say, 10^{-118} -- life wouldn't exist.  Phrased
this way, the value looks very fine tuned.

Suppose, though, that you rephrase the problem in terms of the logarithm
of the cosmological constant. Then the "anthropic" claim is that for
life to exist, -log(L) can be anywhere from 118 to infinity.  Your
reaction to this is probably, meh: a range from 118 to infinity is huge
(infinite, in fact), and 118 isn't such a bizarre limit.

So why should we pay so much attention to L, and not to log(L)? It
happens that L is the form that the constant was first written down, but
that's just an accident of history.  If we knew some physical mechanism
that determined the cosmological constant, that might tell us the
"right" version to look at.  But we don't.

(There are, in fact, some physical arguments -- nonperturbative effects
in quantum field theory -- that are most naturally described in terms of
the square root of log(L).  This ends up telling you that for life as we
know it to exist, some quantity has to be greater than about 4.)

The point is that we can't even start to think properly about whether
something is fine tuned without having some idea of what mechanism might
"tune" it, because taht's the only way to know exactly what is being
"tuned."

Steve Carlip
-----------------***------------------------

--
--
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)

[jillery]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:11:32 -0500, Don Cates
<cate...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:

>On 2019-07-10 1:09 PM, Bill Rogers wrote:
>> On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 12:10:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
>>> According to Professor Leonard Susskind the term
>>> cosmological constant invented by Einstein which is
>>> like an anti-gravity force has a very tiny value - of
>>> ..0000000...(120) zeros..001.or 2, but this force also
>>> called black energy is the cause of the increasing
>>> expansion of our universe. Had this energy been even
>>> slightly different the universe would have expanded
>>> too fast or too slow for stars and galaxies to form
>>> consequently, there could have been no heavy elements
>>> and no life.
>>> According to Dr Susskind, the value of this constant
>>> could not vary more than 1 (one) part in 10 ^120 parts.
>>> >
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4T2Ulv48nw
>>> >
>>> However, Dr susskind turns to the multiverse.
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILwxUXbg_8
>>>
>>> Who is Dr Leonard Susskind?
>>>

>>> Leonard Susskind (/?s?sk?nd/; born 1940)[2][3] is an American physicist,

Thank you for finding and reposting this. That's one advantage of
Dean going through the same arguments over and over; we can just
repost the same replies.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[Robert Carnegie]

It's "dark energy".

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskind>
clarifies:

"_The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion
of Intelligent Design_ is Susskind's first
popular science book, published by Little, Brown and
Company on December 12, 2005. It is Susskind's
attempt to bring his idea of the anthropic landscape of
string theory to the general public. In the book,
Susskind describes how the string theory landscape was
an almost inevitable consequence of several factors,
one of which was Steven Weinberg's prediction of the
cosmological constant in 1987. The question addressed
here is why our universe is fine-tuned for our existence.
Susskind explains that Weinberg calculated that if the
cosmological constant was just a little different, our
universe would cease to exist."

A problem there is the link to
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant>
which says,
"From the 1930s until the late 1990s, most physicists
assumed the cosmological constant to be equal to zero.
That changed with the surprising discovery in 1998 that
the expansion of the universe is accelerating, implying
the possibility of a positive nonzero value for the
cosmological constant."

According to the first, the cosmological constant
is indispensable for life to exist in this universe.
According to the second, "most physicists" didn't
believe that the cosmological constant existed,
even with Steven Weinberg and maybe Susskind presumably
insisting for a decade plus that it had to.

Sometimes Wikipedia is inaccurate, and that's
the easiest answer.

[Ron Dean]

Susskind stated there's no rational answer to this. But the solution
given by several scientist is the multiverse. This would include
Susskind, Hawking, Dawkins, Wineberg, Brian Greene and others. If there
are trillions X trillions X trillions ......of other universes each with
it's own set of cosmological constants or laws of physics, then it's
just a matter of the luck - we just happened to win the lottery.

[Ron Dean]

Einstein was first to introduce the cosmological constant
Conventional wisdom at the time was that the universe was
static. Einstein's general theory of relativity had in it's
mathematics that the universe was expanding, it had a
beginning and possibly an end. This went against Einstein's
view of a static universe, so he introduced his cosmological
constant which he worked out to be zero. He later called
this the biggest mistake of his career. However, the value
given by Susskind is how far off the mark Einstein was.

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

In all probability things like universal constants represent main points
in the structure of mathematics itself. So as that one could derive
the main laws of the universe sitting in a cave doing math,
not measuring anything. It's probably not fine tuning.

Organisms on the other hand would not show up in the main structure
of mathematics. Organisms are chosen from many possible
configurations, most of which configurations don't work,
organisms are intelligently designed.

[Bill Rogers]

Either there's a God who fine-tuned the universe to make it come out just as it did, or there's some physics we (including Susskind) still don't understand. I know where my bet lies.

>But the solution
> given by several scientist is the multiverse. This would include
> Susskind, Hawking, Dawkins, Wineberg, Brian Greene and others. If there
> are trillions X trillions X trillions ......of other universes each with
> it's own set of cosmological constants or laws of physics, then it's
> just a matter of the luck - we just happened to win the lottery.

As I'm pretty sure you've been told several times - the theories that predict multiverses were not thought up to resolve the "fine tuning problem". Multiverses fell out of theories designed to explain the cosmic background radiation, the flatness of the universe and the absence of magnetic monopoles. Multiverses were not invented as an ad hoc defense against Design.

Also, you seem to have completely missed Carlip's point - he's not offering an explanation for fine tuning, he's explaining why fine tuning is a mathematical illusion, and he's not the only physicist who thinks so.

http://www.colyvan.com/papers/finetuning.pdf

[Peter Nyikos]

Possibly misleading wording. It seems to say that God's fine tuning was
so great, that he could leave the universe to its own devices and know
that it would turn out exactly the way it did.

But if that is what you actually mean, then your have shown that
your concept of "omnipotence" admits of a staggering range of
actual abilities. Nothing we discussed on another thread comes
anywhere near the degree you seem to describe here. Those other
degrees start with the first new comments I made in the following post:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/zWkX4s5_DKk/G_TnSi4qAgAJ
Subject: Re: ID - Failures From a Religious Perspective
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2019 14:42:58 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <92b5b1d1-e6d9-4401...@googlegroups.com>

> or there's some physics we don't understand yet.

Is this physics that of the multiverse Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomer
of England and a professor at Cambridge University, envisioned in
_Just Six Numbers_? Part of the Introduction, which gives key details
about that anti-gravity force and five other physical constants,
can be found here:

http://www.ichthus.info/BigBang/Docs/Just6num.pdf

> I know where my bet is.

Or is the unknown physics supposed to be some explanation
of why that constant HAD to be what it is, and that all other
values for that constant are LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE?

If so, what you want is not unknown physics, but unknown
metaphysics. But be careful: Anselm long ago thought he
had a metaphysical proof that the nonexistence of a perfect God
was logically impossible.

And you don't even have that much. So unless you were too bashful
to say that your bet was for the existence of a multiverse,
your "bet" reveals a leap of faith in atheism and materialism even greater
than Anselm's leap of faith in theism, and greater than R. Dean's
very different leap of faith in theism.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 5:20:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:

I have a request for you, Ron. Please leave everything I wrote
in your reply, even if you have nothing to say about it.
You see, Don Cates has me killfiled, and he also has jillery
killfiled, so the only way he will see what I wrote is
if someone besides me and jillery leaves my words in.

And since Don has posted something that professional astrophysicist
Stephen Carlip wrote, it deserves all the discussion it can get.

> On 7/10/2019 4:10 PM, jillery wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:11:32 -0500, Don Cates
> > <cate...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >> On 2019-07-10 1:09 PM, Bill Rogers wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 12:10:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
> >>>> According to Professor Leonard Susskind the term
> >>>> cosmological constant invented by Einstein which is
> >>>> like an anti-gravity force has a very tiny value - of
> >>>> ..0000000...(120) zeros..001.or 2, but this force also
> >>>> called black energy is the cause of the increasing
> >>>> expansion of our universe. Had this energy been even
> >>>> slightly different the universe would have expanded
> >>>> too fast or too slow for stars and galaxies to form

Note that "or too slow". Stephen Carlip only addresses
the "too fast" and so his argument below is woefully incomplete.

With "too slow," the universe would have collapsed upon itself,
because gravity would have overpowered dark energy, producing the
ultimate black hole.

By saying "ultimate" I am humoring all those people
who pooh-pooh the concept of there being any universe besides our
own little, young (< 14 gy) universe.

> >>>> consequently, there could have been no heavy elements
> >>>> and no life.

That has more to do with another constant:

Another number, Є, whose value is 0.007, defines how firmly atomic nuclei
bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. Its value controls
the power from the Sun and, more sensitively, how stars transmute hydrogen
into all the atoms of the periodic table. Carbon and oxygen are common,
whereas gold and uranium are rare, because of what happens in the stars.
If Є were 0.006 or 0.008, we could not exist.
-- Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomerof England and a professor
at Cambridge University, in:

http://www.ichthus.info/BigBang/Docs/Just6num.pdf

For more about the article I am linking here, see my reply to Bill Rogers.

> >>>> According to Dr Susskind, the value of this constant
> >>>> could not vary more than 1 (one) part in 10 ^120 parts.
> >>>> >
> >>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4T2Ulv48nw
> >>>> >
> >>>> However, Dr susskind turns to the multiverse.
> >>>>
> >>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILwxUXbg_8
> >>>>
> >>>> Who is Dr Leonard Susskind?
> >>>>
> >>>> Leonard Susskind (/?s?sk?nd/; born 1940)[2][3] is an American physicist,
> >>>> who is professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and
> >>>> founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His
> >>>> research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum
> >>>> statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology.[1] He is a member of the US
> >>>> National Academy of Sciences,[4] and the American Academy of Arts and
> >>>> Sciences,[5] an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter
> >>>> Institute for Theoretical Physics,[6] and a distinguished professor of
> >>>> the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.[7]
> >>>>
> >>>> Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.[8]
> >>>> He was the first to give a precise string-theoretic interpretation of
> >>>> the holographic principle in 1995[9] and the first to introduce the idea
> >>>> of the string theory landscape in 2003.[10][11]
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskindlein Medal[13].

> >>> Either there's a God who fine-tuned the universe to make it come out just the way it did, or there's some physics we don't understand yet. I know where my bet is.

I put the matter squarely in my reply to Bill about this comment of his:
either he believes in a multiverse or his atheism is based
on a leap of faith even greater than your leap of faith into theism.

> >> This is a copy of a post by Steve Carlip pertinent to this topic.
> >>
> >> ----------------***-----------------
> >> [jillery]
> >>> Some people use "fine tuning" to mean some physical constants can't
> >>> vary their extant value without causing such dramatic changes, that
> >>> life or even the universe itself could not exist.  Based on that,
> >>> they infer these values had to have been purposefully set by an
> >>> intelligent Agent, in order to create a universe that would allow
> >>> life.

Or, like Martin Rees put it in the linked article,

An infinity of other universes may well exist where the numbers are different.
Most would be stillborn or sterile. We could only have emerged
(and therefore we naturally now find ourselves) in a universe
with the `right' combination. This realization offers a radically
new perspective on our universe, on our place in it, and on the nature
of physical laws.

> >>> My understanding is that such an inference is based on other
> >>> assumptions.  Some of them are that the extant values could be
> >>> anything else,

If Stephen Carlip thinks this is an incorrect assumption, his
blind faith in atheism is as great as that of Bill Rogers or greater.

> >>>  and that other physical constants could not adjust
> >>> to compensate.

Carlip does not say what these are. The fine-tuning constants are RATIOS,
and Carlip is claiming that if one ratio is different, some other
ratio of two entirely different physical measurements can be adjusted
to make up for it. At our present state of knowledge, this too is blind faith.

> >> These assumptions can't be tested at this time.

...because they are too inchoate to be scientific hypotheses.

> >>
> >> That's right, but there's another assumption that comes even earlier:
> >> that we know the right way to ask the question.
> >>
> >> Let me give a simple example, for the case of the cosmological constant,
> >> which I'll call L (short for the usual "Lambda").  It's often said that
> >> L has a value (in certain "natural" units) of 10^{-120}, and that it
> >> were slightly larger -- say, 10^{-118} -- life wouldn't exist.  Phrased
> >> this way, the value looks very fine tuned.

Phrased this way, it is a straw man argument, oblivious of what Susskind wrote.
See my comment about "too slow."

> >> Suppose, though, that you rephrase the problem in terms of the logarithm
> >> of the cosmological constant. Then the "anthropic" claim is that for
> >> life to exist, -log(L) can be anywhere from 118 to infinity.  Your
> >> reaction to this is probably, meh: a range from 118 to infinity is huge
> >> (infinite, in fact), and 118 isn't such a bizarre limit.

Yup, but it isn't 118 to infinity, it is 118 to a number that, unfortunately,
your excerpt from Susskind's opus doesn't specify.

> >> So why should we pay so much attention to L, and not to log(L)? It
> >> happens that L is the form that the constant was first written down, but
> >> that's just an accident of history.  If we knew some physical mechanism
> >> that determined the cosmological constant, that might tell us the
> >> "right" version to look at.  But we don't.

This "physical mechanism" seems to be just the sort of thing
that I came down hard on Bill Rogers about:

Or is the unknown physics supposed to be some explanation
of why that constant HAD to be what it is, and that all other
values for that constant are LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE?

Note the word "logically": if it were a mere physical "mechanism"
then that is kicking the can down the road: why did that mechanism
HAVE to be what it is, with all other mechanisms logically impossible?

> >>
> >> (There are, in fact, some physical arguments -- nonperturbative effects
> >> in quantum field theory -- that are most naturally described in terms of
> >> the square root of log(L).  This ends up telling you that for life as we
> >> know it to exist, some quantity has to be greater than about 4.)

... and smaller than something Susskind may have known and of which
Carlip is blissfully ignorant.

> >>
> >> The point is that we can't even start to think properly about whether
> >> something is fine tuned without having some idea of what mechanism might
> >> "tune" it, because taht's the only way to know exactly what is being
> >> "tuned."
> >>
> >> Steve Carlip
> >> -----------------***------------------------
> >>
> >
> >
> > Thank you for finding and reposting this. That's one advantage of
> > Dean going through the same arguments over and over; we can just
> > repost the same replies.

...and totally ignore my rebuttals, snipping them and making fun
of the Cheshire Cat grin that is left in. That's been jillery's
grand strategy for quite some time now against my on-topic arguments.

> >
> Susskind stated there's no rational answer to this.

More specifically, speculation about an ultimate answer from physics
will not provide one. As argued above.

> But the solution
> given by several scientist is the multiverse. This would include
> Susskind, Hawking, Dawkins, Wineberg, Brian Greene and others. If there
> are trillions X trillions X trillions ......of other universes each with
> it's own set of cosmological constants or laws of physics, then it's
> just a matter of the luck - we just happened to win the lottery.

Martin Rees said it too, see above.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

nyikos "at" math.sc.edu

[jillery]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 17:14:38 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>
wrote:

First, Steve Carlip's point is not that we just lucked out, but
instead that the extremely small value of the cosmological constant,
which enthralls you and Susskind, is an arbitrary mathematical
artifact of how its calculated.

Second, we necessarily exist in a universe whose physical constants
allow our existence. If physical constants didn't allow our
existence, we necessarily would not be here to make these posts. What
a multiverse allows is for the existence of a range of values, which
makes it more likely that at least one of them would allow our
existence. That's all. It has nothing to do with luck.

[jillery]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 17:25:16 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>
wrote:

Stated more correctly:

Einstein introduced a positive non-zero cosmological constant to his
GR equations in order to force a zero difference between the left and
right sides.

Einstein's "biggest mistake" was not the value he added, but that he
failed to heed the implication of his own equations, that the universe
is not static but expanding.

Since Einstein's value was an ad-hoc fudge factor, it is only
coincidentally related to the value to which Susskind refers. The
lamda described by Susskind is the repulsive force of spacetime itself
AKA vacuum energy AKA dark energy.

A problem is, when physicists sum up the zero-point vacuum energies of
all the quantum fields known in nature, it gives an repulsive force
120 orders of magnitude greater than what cosmologists observe. This
is why it's called the worst theoretical prediction in the history of
physics.

Since lambda is a function of energy per unit of spacetime, the total
amount of dark energy increases as the universe expands. The
expansion rate of spacetime is a ratio of the repulsive force of dark
energy and the attractive forces of baryonic and dark matter. Since
this total amount of baryonic and dark matter is constant, this
necessarily means that the expansion rate changed over time.

[jillery]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 16:24:27 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyik...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 5:20:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
>
>I have a request for you, Ron. Please leave everything I wrote
>in your reply, even if you have nothing to say about it.
>You see, Don Cates has me killfiled, and he also has jillery
>killfiled, so the only way he will see what I wrote is
>if someone besides me and jillery leaves my words in.

My impression is this will shock you, but nobody here has an
obligation to help you spam your spew. Get over yourself.

<snip for focus>

>> > Thank you for finding and reposting this. That's one advantage of
>> > Dean going through the same arguments over and over; we can just
>> > repost the same replies.
>
>...and totally ignore my rebuttals,

Your alleged rebuttals like the ones below are eminently ignorable,
just as you ignore mine. Tu quoque back atcha, asshole.

>snipping them and making fun
>of the Cheshire Cat grin that is left in. That's been jillery's
>grand strategy for quite some time now against my on-topic arguments.

Liar. Only you would pretend that your comments above qualify as
on-topic.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/10/19 9:05 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
> [snip fine-tuning argument, already rebutted by Steve Carlip]

A quick question for you, Ron: What is the probability (best estimate)
of intelligent life existing in the universe?

Anyone who understands probability can give an answer accurate to at
least two significant figures, supported by easily obtainable objective
evidence. Can you? More important, can you explain how the figure is
arrived at?

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"Omnia disce. Videbis postea nihil esse superfluum."
- Hugh of St. Victor

[Ron Dean]

On 7/10/2019 5:36 PM, Mohammad Nur Syamsu wrote:
> In all probability things like universal constants represent main points
> in the structure of mathematics itself. So as that one could derive
> the main laws of the universe sitting in a cave doing math,
> not measuring anything. It's probably not fine tuning.
>

Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
is increasing. The cosmological constant or dark energy, is pushing
galaxies apart, this force is of a known value. It's also known that the
value could not have varied by more than a factor of 1 part in 10^120
parts. How did the cosmological constant arrive with such an extremely
precise value?
It is also known that if the value had varied by +/_ 1 or 2 parts the
universe would have expanded too fast for stars and galaxies to form
or too slow and a big crunch would have occurred. Hence no heavy metals
and no life;

>
> Organisms on the other hand would not show up in the main structure
> of mathematics. Organisms are chosen from many possible
> configurations, most of which configurations don't work,
> organisms are intelligently designed.
>

[Ron Dean]

There's nothing wrong with the way I stated Einstein's "problem"!

>
> Einstein's "biggest mistake" was not the value he added, but that he
> failed to heed the implication of his own equations, that the universe
> is not static but expanding.
>

True, but this is understood.

>
> Since Einstein's value was an ad-hoc fudge factor, it is only
> coincidentally related to the value to which Susskind refers. The
> lamda described by Susskind is the repulsive force of spacetime itself
> AKA vacuum energy AKA dark energy.
>

I disagree. The value Susskind and Weinberg gave was the difference
between Einstein's zero and the actual value of the dark energy force,
which is forcing galaxies apart. Allthough the value is extremely small
IE .000000....(120 zeros)...01.
Einstein's zero
value was the reference point. And that's the difference.

>
> A problem is, when physicists sum up the zero-point vacuum energies of
> all the quantum fields known in nature, it gives an repulsive force
> 120 orders of magnitude greater than what cosmologists observe. This
> is why it's called the worst theoretical prediction in the history of
> physics.
>
> Since lambda is a function of energy per unit of spacetime, the total
> amount of dark energy increases as the universe expands. The
> expansion rate of spacetime is a ratio of the repulsive force of dark
> energy and the attractive forces of baryonic and dark matter. Since
> this total amount of baryonic and dark matter is constant, this
> necessarily means that the expansion rate changed over time.
>

Stars, galaxies are attracted to each other by gravity, as they move
further further apart the force of gravity decreases with increasing
distance between them, there is no evidence that dark energy increases.
There is no source for increasing dark energy. After some 13 (?) billion
years after the Big Bang, according to Martin Rees the rate of expansion
is near "unity" with the mathematical model. (not his exact wording)
But it's close as I remember it.

[Ron Dean]

On 7/10/2019 4:10 PM, jillery wrote:

OK, but this does not address the fact that this is dark energy and
if the values were slightly different the universe itself would fail;
Either it would collapse back on itself or expand to fast for stars
and galaxies to form, hence no heavy metals and no life. Furthermore
his number of 118 to infinity certainly would spell doom for life.

>>
>> So why should we pay so much attention to L, and not to log(L)? It
>> happens that L is the form that the constant was first written down, but
>> that's just an accident of history.  If we knew some physical mechanism
>> that determined the cosmological constant, that might tell us the
>> "right" version to look at.  But we don't.
>>
>> (There are, in fact, some physical arguments -- nonperturbative effects
>> in quantum field theory -- that are most naturally described in terms of
>> the square root of log(L).  This ends up telling you that for life as we
>> know it to exist, some quantity has to be greater than about 4.)
>>
>> The point is that we can't even start to think properly about whether
>> something is fine tuned without having some idea of what mechanism might
>> "tune" it, because taht's the only way to know exactly what is being
>> "tuned."
>

In other words: unless there is knobs hidden somewhere and we are able
to find them and learn how they work, there is no way to determine
fine tuning.

>>
>> Steve Carlip
>> -----------------***------------------------
>>
>
>
> Thank you for finding and reposting this. That's one advantage of
> Dean going through the same arguments over and over; we can just
> repost the same replies.
>

I've never seen this post by Steve Carlip before. And this makes far
more sense, than anything else I've seen, which was proposed to debunk
fine tuning. And I found some flaws in his reasoning.

[jillery]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 23:58:06 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>
wrote:

Carlip above explains why Susskind's and your concern wrt to the very
small value of the cosmological constant isn't meaningful. Carlip's
118 refers to 10^118, which is a very large number, and 10^118-10^120
is a very large range, hardly the stuff to inspire fine-tuning.

>>> So why should we pay so much attention to L, and not to log(L)? It
>>> happens that L is the form that the constant was first written down, but
>>> that's just an accident of history.  If we knew some physical mechanism
>>> that determined the cosmological constant, that might tell us the
>>> "right" version to look at.  But we don't.
>>>
>>> (There are, in fact, some physical arguments -- nonperturbative effects
>>> in quantum field theory -- that are most naturally described in terms of
>>> the square root of log(L).  This ends up telling you that for life as we
>>> know it to exist, some quantity has to be greater than about 4.)
>>>
>>> The point is that we can't even start to think properly about whether
>>> something is fine tuned without having some idea of what mechanism might
>>> "tune" it, because taht's the only way to know exactly what is being
>>> "tuned."
> >
>In other words: unless there is knobs hidden somewhere and we are able
>to find them and learn how they work, there is no way to determine
>fine tuning.

That's a trivializing way to put it, but it doesn't make wrong what
Carlip wrote.

>>> Steve Carlip
>>> -----------------***------------------------
>>>
>>
>>
>> Thank you for finding and reposting this. That's one advantage of
>> Dean going through the same arguments over and over; we can just
>> repost the same replies.
>>
>I've never seen this post by Steve Carlip before. And this makes far
>more sense, than anything else I've seen, which was proposed to debunk
>fine tuning. And I found some flaws in his reasoning.

Steve Carlip posted this last March in direct reply to your OP to the
topic "The Cosmological Constant". It doesn't really matter that you
didn't see it before, his comments are as valid now as they were then.
And your flaws are flawed.

[jillery]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 22:34:01 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>
wrote:

>On 7/10/2019 5:36 PM, Mohammad Nur Syamsu wrote:
>> In all probability things like universal constants represent main points
>> in the structure of mathematics itself. So as that one could derive
>> the main laws of the universe sitting in a cave doing math,
>> not measuring anything. It's probably not fine tuning.
> >
>Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
>is increasing. The cosmological constant or dark energy, is pushing
>galaxies apart, this force is of a known value. It's also known that the
>value could not have varied by more than a factor of 1 part in 10^120
>parts. How did the cosmological constant arrive with such an extremely
>precise value?
>It is also known that if the value had varied by +/_ 1 or 2 parts the
>universe would have expanded too fast for stars and galaxies to form
>or too slow and a big crunch would have occurred. Hence no heavy metals
>and no life;

You don't know this. You assume a change to Lambda only. You do not
know if such a change was even possible, or if such a change wouldn't
necessarily cause a compensating change to other physical constants.
You're making assumptions based on a sample of one, not very
scientific.

>> Organisms on the other hand would not show up in the main structure
>> of mathematics. Organisms are chosen from many possible
>> configurations, most of which configurations don't work,
>> organisms are intelligently designed.

[jillery]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 23:28:59 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>

Sorry, but you say above and below that the value of Einstein's
constant was zero. That's simply incorrect. I hope that if you stop
and think about it, you will soon figure out why.

>> Einstein's "biggest mistake" was not the value he added, but that he
>> failed to heed the implication of his own equations, that the universe
>> is not static but expanding.
> >
>True, but this is understood.

True, but this is not what you wrote.

>> Since Einstein's value was an ad-hoc fudge factor, it is only
>> coincidentally related to the value to which Susskind refers. The
>> lamda described by Susskind is the repulsive force of spacetime itself
>> AKA vacuum energy AKA dark energy.
> >
>I disagree. The value Susskind and Weinberg gave was the difference
>between Einstein's zero and the actual value of the dark energy force,
>which is forcing galaxies apart. Allthough the value is extremely small
>IE .000000....(120 zeros)...01.
>Einstein's zero value was the reference point. And that's the difference.

I have listened to your cited videos several times, and I could find
nothing which sounds remotely close to what you describe above. Of
course, I could have missed it. Cite a time-stamp where they say what
you say. Or cite anything from any source which documents same.

>> A problem is, when physicists sum up the zero-point vacuum energies of
>> all the quantum fields known in nature, it gives an repulsive force
>> 120 orders of magnitude greater than what cosmologists observe. This
>> is why it's called the worst theoretical prediction in the history of
>> physics.
>>
>> Since lambda is a function of energy per unit of spacetime, the total
>> amount of dark energy increases as the universe expands. The
>> expansion rate of spacetime is a ratio of the repulsive force of dark
>> energy and the attractive forces of baryonic and dark matter. Since
>> this total amount of baryonic and dark matter is constant, this
>> necessarily means that the expansion rate changed over time.
>>
>Stars, galaxies are attracted to each other by gravity, as they move
>further further apart the force of gravity decreases with increasing
>distance between them, there is no evidence that dark energy increases.
>There is no source for increasing dark energy. After some 13 (?) billion
>years after the Big Bang, according to Martin Rees the rate of expansion
>is near "unity" with the mathematical model. (not his exact wording)
>But it's close as I remember it.

Here's a short video of Martin Reese describing his six numbers:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiCUnVtCHk4>

@1:51 Reese refers to the 1998 discovery of dark energy's
"anti-gravity" "destined to become ever more dominant over gravity and
other forces", which directly contradicts your comments above.

>From: Just Six Numbers
>
>
>
>
>
>---
>This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
>https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[Steven Carlip]

On 7/11/19 4:34 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
> On 7/10/2019 5:36 PM, Mohammad Nur Syamsu wrote:
>> In all probability things like universal constants represent main points
>> in the structure of mathematics itself. So as that one could derive
>> the main laws of the universe sitting in a cave doing math,
>> not measuring anything. It's probably not fine tuning.

> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
> is increasing. The cosmological constant or dark energy, is pushing
> galaxies apart, this force is of a known value. It's also known that the
> value could not have varied by more than a factor of 1 part in 10^120
> parts. How did the cosmological constant arrive with such an extremely
> precise value?

> It is also known that if the value had varied by +/_ 1 or 2 parts the
> universe would have expanded too fast for stars and galaxies to form
> or too slow and a big crunch would have occurred. Hence no heavy metals
> and no life;

You've misstated the physics here. The correct statement is that for
life as we know it to exist (and assuming no other changes in other
fundamental constants):

(1) if the cosmological constant is positive, its logarithm must be
less than about -120. Anything from -120 to -infinity would do.

(2) if the cosmological constant is negative, the logarithm of its
absolute value must be less than about -120. Again, anything from
-120 to -infinity would do.

These are enormous ranges of allowed values. There's a mystery in
the physics, but it's a much more subtle one -- we would naively
expect quantum corrections that would take the cosmological constant
outside these ranges, and we don't understand why that doesn't
happen.But this has to do with quantum gravity, a subject that we
know very little about in general.

Steve Carlip

[Steven Carlip]

On 7/11/19 1:24 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[...]

>> On 7/10/2019 4:10 PM, jillery wrote:
>>> On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:11:32 -0500, Don Cates
>>> <cate...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:

>>>> On 2019-07-10 1:09 PM, Bill Rogers wrote:
>>>>> On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 12:10:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
>>>>>> According to Professor Leonard Susskind the term
>>>>>> cosmological constant invented by Einstein which is
>>>>>> like an anti-gravity force has a very tiny value - of
>>>>>> ..0000000...(120) zeros..001.or 2, but this force also
>>>>>> called black energy is the cause of the increasing
>>>>>> expansion of our universe. Had this energy been even
>>>>>> slightly different the universe would have expanded
>>>>>> too fast or too slow for stars and galaxies to form

> Note that "or too slow". Stephen Carlip only addresses
> the "too fast" and so his argument below is woefully incomplete.

You've misunderstood the physics. "Too fast" refers to a positive
value of the cosmological constant; "too slow" refers to a negative
value. In both cases, the limit on the logarithm of the absolute
value of Lambda is that log|Lambda|<-120, qith any value from
about -120 to -infinity allowed.

The basic issue here is elementary mathematics. To say that a
quantity is "fine tuned," you are implicitly saying that its value
is improbable. (If I flip a coin and get heads, no one will say,
"That's fine tuned -- it could have been tails.") But to say that
a value is improbable, you need a probability distribution.

You might be tempted to use a uniform distribution, but this won't
work -- if the possible range is infinite, a uniform probability
distribution just doesn't exist. In practice, what people often
do (sometimes without realizing it) is to stick in a cut-off at
some "large" value and assume a uniform distribution on a finite
range. But even if there were a good justification for doing this,
it would involve a strong assumption about ea\xctly what quantity
you assume has a uniform distribution. In the example I gave, for
instance, the implications of a uniform distribution of Lambda are
completely different from the implications of a uniform distribution
of log|Lambda|.

The only way I know of resolving this huge ambiguity is to have
a particular model for a mechanism that produces the probability
distribution. There are some proposals for such models (for instance
the "string theory landscape"), but without something like that,
claims of fine-tuning are fundamentally ill-posed.

Steve Carlip

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/10/19 7:34 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
> >
> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe

> is increasing. [...]

That's another interesting theological point that needs to be
considered. If the universe is fine-tuned, that means it was literally
designed to fall apart.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 6:00:02 AM UTC-4, Steven Carlip wrote:

> On 7/11/19 1:24 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [...]
> >> On 7/10/2019 4:10 PM, jillery wrote:
> >>> On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:11:32 -0500, Don Cates
> >>> <cate...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:
>
> >>>> On 2019-07-10 1:09 PM, Bill Rogers wrote:
> >>>>> On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 12:10:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
> >>>>>> According to Professor Leonard Susskind the term
> >>>>>> cosmological constant invented by Einstein which is
> >>>>>> like an anti-gravity force has a very tiny value - of
> >>>>>> ..0000000...(120) zeros..001.or 2, but this force also
> >>>>>> called black energy is the cause of the increasing
> >>>>>> expansion of our universe. Had this energy been even
> >>>>>> slightly different the universe would have expanded
> >>>>>> too fast or too slow for stars and galaxies to form
>
> > Note that "or too slow". Stephen Carlip only addresses
> > the "too fast" and so his argument below is woefully incomplete.
>
> You've misunderstood the physics.

No, I misunderstood a mathematical abstraction
of the physics. To appreciate the difference, this is some of what Martin Rees wrote about lambda
in Chapter 7, p. 97 of _Just Six Numbers_, when he gives
some physical background to the question of why lambda is "so small".

Why don't all the complicated processes that are
going on, even in empty space, have a net effect
that is much larger? ... why isn't space as dense
as the universe was at 10^{-35} seconds -- an
era whose significance for unified theories is
discussed in later chapters? In fact, it is lower
than that ultra-early density by a factor of
10^{120} - perhaps the worst failure of an
order-of-magnitude guess in the whole of science.
That value of lambda may not be exactly zero, but
it is certainly so weak that it can only compete
in the very dilute gravity of intergalactic space.


To this you might reply, "meh, so what if the log of lambda were 10^120 instead of 120? so what if the "worst failure"
were that much worse? All that would mean is
that we theoretical physicists would have a fantastic new topic
on which to publish papers in _Science_, _Nature_...".

But do you really want to go that route?

> "Too fast" refers to a positive
> value of the cosmological constant; "too slow"
> refers to a negative value. In both cases, the limit on the logarithm of the absolute
> value of Lambda is that log|Lambda|<-120,

Earlier you neglected to put the absolute value
symbol there. So I believe I can be excused for relying on
something R. Dean attributed to Susskind.

> with any value from about -120 to -infinity allowed.

How about applying that reasoning to another
constant I wrote about later in my post:

Another number, Є, whose value is 0.007, defines how firmly atomic nuclei
bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. Its value controls
the power from the Sun and, more sensitively, how stars transmute hydrogen
into all the atoms of the periodic table. Carbon and oxygen are common,
whereas gold and uranium are rare, because of what happens in the stars.
If Є were 0.006 or 0.008, we could not exist.
-- Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomerof England and a professor
at Cambridge University, in:

http://www.ichthus.info/BigBang/Docs/Just6num.pdf

Now you can't be taking the log of the absolute value, but the log of the distance from 0.08, and
you have to explain where that central number 0.08 came from.

>
> The basic issue here is elementary mathematics.

...divorced from the extra information physics gives you,
as in the part I quoted from Chapter 7 of Reese's book.


Before we get into the philosophy-of-math-and-science issues
you brought up next [left in below] I have some very concrete questions about lambda.

Has it been constant all through the history of our
universe?
or was it enormous during the inflationary period, as Reese suggested elsewhere?

Or is the "dark energy" associated with lambda a completely different physical phenomenon than the "dark energy" behind the inflation?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

PS Were you burning the midnight oil when you posted? Your post showed up here at 6am; see the attribution line to your post.
OTOH the 1:24 am in the attribution line to my post must refer to Greenwich time.

[jillery]

Thank you for this clarification of the point, which addresses Reese's
expressed claim that the value of the cosmological constant is too
small to have happened by chance.

Reese makes another claim which sounds contradictory, that if the
value for cosmic expansion (lambda) was just a tiny bit different,
galaxies and stars and planets could not have formed. My
understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to the
volume of spacetime and dark energy. If that is so, the value of
lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the
early universe. Instead, my understanding is the expansion
immediately after Inflation was dominated by radiation pressure, which
is an entirely different thing from lambda and dark energy.

I claim no particular expertise on this topic, which is a challenge
when someone like Martin Reese makes claims which appear to be
contrary to what I have read elsewhere. Since your attention is
focused on this topic, will you take some time to post a clarification
of the questions I raised above?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 11:40:04 AM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:

... a very typically absent minded error:

> How about applying that reasoning to another
> constant I wrote about later in my post:
>
> Another number, Є, whose value is 0.007, defines how firmly atomic nuclei
> bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. Its value controls
> the power from the Sun and, more sensitively, how stars transmute hydrogen
> into all the atoms of the periodic table. Carbon and oxygen are common,
> whereas gold and uranium are rare, because of what happens in the stars.
> If Є were 0.006 or 0.008, we could not exist.
> -- Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomerof England and a professor
> at Cambridge University, in:
>
> http://www.ichthus.info/BigBang/Docs/Just6num.pdf
>
> Now you can't be taking the log of the absolute value, but the log of the distance from 0.08,

This is what I get for not enlarging my typing window enough and relying on my memory and being
focused on the big picture instead of the mundane arithmetical figures.

That 0.08 should be 0.007. I've fixed it below.

> and
> you have to explain where that central number [0.007] came from.


Wiping the egg off my face,

Peter Nyikos
Absent-minded Professor of Mathematics

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 5:35:04 AM UTC-4, Steven Carlip wrote:
> On 7/11/19 4:34 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
> > On 7/10/2019 5:36 PM, Mohammad Nur Syamsu wrote:
> >> In all probability things like universal constants represent main points
> >> in the structure of mathematics itself.

This is nonsense. The structure of mathematics is based on
the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms, which have nothing to say about our physical cosmos.

> >> So as that one could derive
> >> the main laws of the universe sitting in a cave doing math,
> >> not measuring anything.

It ain't gonna happen.

> >> It's probably not fine tuning.
>
> > Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
> > is increasing. The cosmological constant or dark energy, is pushing
> > galaxies apart, this force is of a known value. It's also known that the
> > value could not have varied by more than a factor of 1 part in 10^120
> > parts. How did the cosmological constant arrive with such an extremely
> > precise value?
>
> > It is also known that if the value had varied by +/_ 1 or 2 parts the
> > universe would have expanded too fast for stars and galaxies to form
> > or too slow and a big crunch would have occurred. Hence no heavy metals
> > and no life;
>
> You've misstated the physics here. The correct statement is that for
> life as we know it to exist (and assuming no other changes in other
> fundamental constants):

Ay, there's the rub. The usual misconception is that any adjustment
in other constants will work to the advantage of the debunkers
of fine-tuning, but in this case, another basic constant, Omega, works against them.

The current value of Omega is 0.3, which very comfortably gives us
a universe whose expansion will not slow down much even in the absence of lambda.

But on page 86 of _Just Six Numbers_, Martin Rees wrote:

[the current value] implies that Omega was
VERY CLOSE INDEED to unity in early eras.
[I've used capitals where Reese used italics.]

And on the following page, there is a diagram showing that
the tolerances on Omega close to the Big Bang were much
smaller than now. What's more, the diagram strongly agrees with what
R. Dean wrote. It was back then, and not now, that the
value of lambda also had much lower tolerances than what you
claim below, because of the near-metastable situation of Omega.

> (1) if the cosmological constant is positive, its logarithm must be
> less than about -120. Anything from -120 to -infinity would do.
>
> (2) if the cosmological constant is negative, the logarithm of its
> absolute value must be less than about -120. Again, anything from
> -120 to -infinity would do.
>
> These are enormous ranges of allowed values.

That's a cheap mathematical trick, and ignores the
physical theory behind the number lambda, which
Rees simplified for a general audience in the part
I quoted to you in my earlier reply to you today.
I await your reaction to that, and especially to my
challenge to how you explain "Euro" being centered around
0.007 instead of zero.

> There's a mystery in
> the physics, but it's a much more subtle one -- we would naively
> expect quantum corrections that would take the cosmological constant
> outside these ranges, and we don't understand why that doesn't
> happen.But this has to do with quantum gravity, a subject that we
> know very little about in general.

Instead of "God of the Gaps" we have "Carlip of the Gaps." :-)

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos

[Ron Dean]

On 7/11/2019 5:34 AM, Steven Carlip wrote:
> On 7/11/19 4:34 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
>> On 7/10/2019 5:36 PM, Mohammad Nur Syamsu wrote:
>>> In all probability things like universal constants represent main points
>>> in the structure of mathematics itself. So as that one could derive
>>> the main laws of the universe sitting in a cave doing math,
>>> not measuring anything. It's probably not fine tuning.
>
>> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
>> is increasing. The cosmological constant or dark energy, is pushing
>> galaxies apart, this force is of a known value. It's also known that
>> the value could not have varied by more than a factor of 1 part in
>> 10^120 parts. How did the cosmological constant arrive with such an
>> extremely precise value?
>
>> It is also known that if the value had varied by +/_ 1 or 2 parts the
>> universe would have expanded too fast for stars and galaxies to form
>> or too slow and a big crunch would have occurred. Hence no heavy metals
>> and no life;
>
> You've misstated the physics here.  The correct statement is that for
> life as we know it to exist (and assuming no other changes in other
> fundamental constants):
>

But can we assume that any change would not affect other constants?
I can understand that if gravity were weaker or stronger, then this
change in the strength in gravity could be compensated for.

>
> (1) if the cosmological constant is positive, its logarithm must be
> less than about -120.  Anything from -120 to -infinity would do.
>

This would change the cosmological constant from what it actually is!
And this alteration would reduce the chances of life to zero.

>
> (2) if the cosmological constant is negative, the logarithm of its
> absolute value must be less than about -120.  Again, anything from
> -120 to -infinity would do.
>
> These are enormous ranges of allowed values.  There's a mystery in
> the physics, but it's a much more subtle one -- we would naively
> expect quantum corrections that would take the cosmological constant
> outside these ranges, and we don't understand why that doesn't
> happen.But this has to do with quantum gravity, a subject that we
> know very little about in general.
>

I know that quantum mechanics explains all kinds of things that could
not be explained before. But it's weird, and it seems that if you follow
the rules it doesn't make sense. In quantum mechanics an object could
exist in many states at the same time. And this is dumb.
>
> Steve Carlip

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 11:50:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:34:11 +0200, Steven Carlip

replied to R. Dean, and jillery wrote in reply to Carlip:

> Thank you for this clarification of the point, which addresses Reese's
> expressed claim that the value of the cosmological constant is too
> small to have happened by chance.

I think you are confusing Rees [not Reese] with Susskind here.

> Reese makes another claim which sounds contradictory, that if the
> value for cosmic expansion (lambda) was just a tiny bit different,
> galaxies and stars and planets could not have formed.

Rees makes THAT statement about Omega, not lambda, being too *low*.
He also writes that if it were too *high*, "the universe would have collapsed long ago."

> My understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to the
> volume of spacetime and dark energy. If that is so, the value of
> lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the
> early universe.

You are looking at lambda in isolation, whereas the right way to look
at this issue is to treat it together with Omega. See my
own reply to Steven's post here.

> Instead, my understanding is the expansion
> immediately after Inflation was dominated by radiation pressure, which
> is an entirely different thing from lambda and dark energy.

I await Steven's take on this.


< merciful snip of confusion about what Rees wrote>

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos

[Glenn]

"Because of the lack of hard evidence, it's probably not surprising that over 70% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences declare themselves to be atheists.

But they have a big problem, too.

"Absent a creator, how do they account for the existence of the universe, of planet earth, of human consciousness? How do they account for the existence of …anything?
Well, turns out they have an answer. And it's become all the rage in scientific circles."
...
"So, let me ask you, who's taking the bigger leap?
I'm Brian Keating, Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, for Prager University."

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/answering-atheists/what-s-a-greater-leap-of-faith-god-or-the-multiverse.html

[Peter Nyikos]

Nice, but inconclusive: Keating leaves it up to each reader
to judge for him/herself which is the greater leap of faith,
the multiverse or God?

It's not an easy question. On the other hand, I do believe the question
becomes a no-brainer when the blind faith that the constants LOGICALLY
HAD TO BE what they are is substituted for the multiverse.

By the way, I've neatly converted Keating's either-or question into
a both-and question by a hypothesis that our universe was designed
by an immensely powerful and intelligent being that evolved in a
far grander universe of the multiverse than ours.

And so my main alternatives are different from Keating's:

Which is more likely: a multiverse in which no such powerful beings
could possibly exist, or that some do exist AND that our little universe
was designed by one of them?

Note that I do not say "created": a designer may have simply altered
some fields of its own universe to produce fields of ours, so that the
subatomic particles that come from these fields are different from
those of the grander universe.

I still think the first alternative is the more likely, but I have some
faint hope that the latter is true. This faint hope became a lot less
faint when I learned about what the Higgs field is responsible for.

[Harshman tried to downplay the importance of the Higgs field by
claiming that the Higgs field was the Higgs boson, but that only goes
to show how Harshman is very confident about things that ain't so.]

So, for convenience, I say that my confidence level that the second of
my alternatives is true is about 10%.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 10:35:02 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/10/19 7:34 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
> > >
> > Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
> > is increasing. [...]
>
> That's another interesting theological point that needs to be
> considered. If the universe is fine-tuned, that means it was literally
> designed to fall apart.

Is this some sort of joke?

What's theological about this unintelligible second sentence of yours?

Peter Nyikos

[Ron Dean]

As I stated before this was convention at the time, and even though
Einstein's formula showed that the universe was not static, but Einstein
needed a static universe. He believed the cosmological constant was zero
as did most physicist. It required the cosmological constant to be equal
to Zero to give him what he needed. This he called his biggest blunder.

From Wikipedia:

"From the 1930s until the late 1990s, most physicists assumed the

cosmological constant to be equal to zero.[4] That changed with the

surprising discovery in 1998 that the expansion of the universe is
accelerating, implying the possibility of a positive nonzero value for

the cosmological constant.[5]"

>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant

>
>>> Einstein's "biggest mistake" was not the value he added, but that he
>>> failed to heed the implication of his own equations, that the universe
>>> is not static but expanding.
>>>
>> True, but this is understood.
>
>
> True, but this is not what you wrote.
>

Ok, but I knew this.

>
>>> Since Einstein's value was an ad-hoc fudge factor, it is only
>>> coincidentally related to the value to which Susskind refers. The
>>> lamda described by Susskind is the repulsive force of spacetime itself
>>> AKA vacuum energy AKA dark energy.
>>>
>> I disagree. The value Susskind and Weinberg gave was the difference
>> between Einstein's zero and the actual value of the dark energy force,
>> which is forcing galaxies apart. Allthough the value is extremely small
>> IE .000000....(120 zeros)...01.
>> Einstein's zero value was the reference point. And that's the difference.
>
> I have listened to your cited videos several times, and I could find
> nothing which sounds remotely close to what you describe above. Of
> course, I could have missed it. Cite a time-stamp where they say what
> you say. Or cite anything from any source which documents same.
>

The value Susskind and Weinberg gave, and the zero Einstein needed,both
values were meant to describe the cosmological constant (which is the
universal expanding force) and the the value given by Susskind is
the difference from zero. I've been wrong before, but Jill, this makes
senseto me. >

>>> A problem is, when physicists sum up the zero-point vacuum energies of
>>> all the quantum fields known in nature, it gives an repulsive force
>>> 120 orders of magnitude greater than what cosmologists observe. This
>>> is why it's called the worst theoretical prediction in the history of
>>> physics.
>>>
>>> Since lambda is a function of energy per unit of spacetime, the total
>>> amount of dark energy increases as the universe expands. The
>>> expansion rate of spacetime is a ratio of the repulsive force of dark
>>> energy and the attractive forces of baryonic and dark matter. Since
>>> this total amount of baryonic and dark matter is constant, this
>>> necessarily means that the expansion rate changed over time.
>>>
>> Stars, galaxies are attracted to each other by gravity, as they move
>> further further apart the force of gravity decreases with increasing
>> distance between them, there is no evidence that dark energy increases.
>> There is no source for increasing dark energy. After some 13 (?) billion
>> years after the Big Bang, according to Martin Rees the rate of expansion
>> is near "unity" with the mathematical model. (not his exact wording)
>> But it's close as I remember it.
>
>
> Here's a short video of Martin Reese describing his six numbers:
>
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiCUnVtCHk4>
>
> @1:51 Reese refers to the 1998 discovery of dark energy's
> "anti-gravity" "destined to become ever more dominant over gravity and
> other forces", which directly contradicts your comments above
>

Maybe so, but as I understand it, if the dark energy is constant, but
there is increasing distance between galaxies: distance automatically
lessens the pull of gravity between galaxies, In Dr Rees words," the
anti gravity force becomes dominant over gravity and other forces as the
universe become ever darker and emptier, So yes, over time
dark energy will tend to speed up the expansion of the universe as
galaxies become further and further apart or as the universe becomes
ever darker and emptier. And this is real and this has been the case.
>
OK but this does not explain how the six constants explained by Dr Rees
arrived at their values, but they were imprinted at the moment of the
Big Bang. The precision of these number spells design. But Dr Rees,
Susskind, Hawking, Dawkins and others turn to the multiverse.
If there is an infinite number of universes, then it's just luck that
we happen to reside in one with just the right laws of physics or
constants. We won the lottery.

In words of Benard Carr:
"If you don't want God you better have a multiverse."

[Mark Isaak]

The expansion of the universe is accelerating inexorably, so that
eventually the universe will fly apart. As I recall, this means
ultimately the disintegration of all matter. To me, that does not sound
like design, unless there are customers around to replace this one for a
new, improved universe.

[Glenn]

That isn't the issue, nor relevant. Both are outside of science' perview.

>
> It's not an easy question. On the other hand, I do believe the question
> becomes a no-brainer when the blind faith that the constants LOGICALLY
> HAD TO BE what they are is substituted for the multiverse.
>
> By the way, I've neatly converted Keating's either-or question into
> a both-and question by a hypothesis that our universe was designed
> by an immensely powerful and intelligent being that evolved in a
> far grander universe of the multiverse than ours.
>
> And so my main alternatives are different from Keating's:
>
> Which is more likely: a multiverse in which no such powerful beings
> could possibly exist, or that some do exist AND that our little universe
> was designed by one of them?
>
> Note that I do not say "created": a designer may have simply altered
> some fields of its own universe to produce fields of ours, so that the
> subatomic particles that come from these fields are different from
> those of the grander universe.
>
> I still think the first alternative is the more likely, but I have some
> faint hope that the latter is true. This faint hope became a lot less
> faint when I learned about what the Higgs field is responsible for.
>
> [Harshman tried to downplay the importance of the Higgs field by
> claiming that the Higgs field was the Higgs boson, but that only goes
> to show how Harshman is very confident about things that ain't so.]
>
> So, for convenience, I say that my confidence level that the second of
> my alternatives is true is about 10%.
>

I think multiuniverse believers are like Buzz Lightyear saying "To Infinity and Beyond!"
Would there be restrictions put on these infinite universes? If not, a God who could and had, has and will, could create one himself. I suppose an infinity of universes does suppress the question of where they all came from, as is the question of some about God. But what is "infinity" and is there anything in "infinity" besides "universes"?

[Ernest Major]

On 11/07/2019 22:08, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/11/19 1:07 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 10:35:02 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> On 7/10/19 7:34 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
>>>>   >
>>>> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
>>>> is increasing.  [...]
>>>
>>> That's another interesting theological point that needs to be
>>> considered.  If the universe is fine-tuned, that means it was literally
>>> designed to fall apart.
>>
>>
>> Is this some sort of joke?
>>
>> What's theological about this unintelligible second sentence of yours?
>
> The expansion of the universe is accelerating inexorably, so that
> eventually the universe will fly apart.  As I recall, this means
> ultimately the disintegration of all matter.  To me, that does not sound
> like design, unless there are customers around to replace this one for a
> new, improved universe.
>

Without the Big Rip, the universe is "fine tuned" to support life for
only a minuscule proportion of its existence, as well as only in a
minuscule proportion of its volume, regardless of any accelerating
expansion. With the Big Rip we have a problem in defining the duration
of the universe, due to the singularity at its end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip

Without the Big Rip we still have the disintegration of all matter, as
protons decay positrons (and pions, which then decay to photons), which
then annihilate by collision with electrons, leaving a universe without
a baryonic component.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Ron Dean]

On 7/11/2019 10:30 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/10/19 7:34 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
>>  >
>> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
>> is increasing.  [...]
>
> That's another interesting theological point that needs to be
> considered.  If the universe is fine-tuned, that means it was literally
> designed to fall apart.
>

A few billion years from now anything looking into space will see
nothing. Stars galaxies will have gone beyond anything even the largest
telescope can see. The "universe" will be dark.

[jillery]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:06:40 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyik...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 11:50:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:34:11 +0200, Steven Carlip
>

>> Thank you for this clarification of the point, which addresses Reese's
>> expressed claim that the value of the cosmological constant is too
>> small to have happened by chance.
>
>I think you are confusing Rees [not Reese] with Susskind here.

You think incorrectly. Rees wrote "Just Six Numbers", not Susskind.

But thank you for pointing out that I misspelled his name. That's the
kind of penetrating criticism for which you are justifiably famous.

>> Reese makes another claim which sounds contradictory, that if the
>> value for cosmic expansion (lambda) was just a tiny bit different,
>> galaxies and stars and planets could not have formed.
>
>Rees makes THAT statement about Omega, not lambda, being too *low*.
>He also writes that if it were too *high*, "the universe would have collapsed long ago."

Rees wrote about Lambda as I described above:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiCUnVtCHk4>
(Rees reading from his book)
****************************
@2:10
Fortunately for us, Lambda is very small. Otherwise its effect would
have stopped galaxies and stars from forming, and cosmic evolution
would have been stifled before it could even begin.
****************************

>> My understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to the
>> volume of spacetime and dark energy. If that is so, the value of
>> lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the
>> early universe.
>
>You are looking at lambda in isolation, whereas the right way to look
>at this issue is to treat it together with Omega. See my
>own reply to Steven's post here.

Your "own reply" is confused, as is your comment above. It's IDists
who argue to change a single physical constant in isolation. Most
cosmologists I have read understand that claims of "failure" are based
on that assumption, and so instead recognize that different
*combinations* of values are more relevant.

>> Instead, my understanding is the expansion
>> immediately after Inflation was dominated by radiation pressure, which
>> is an entirely different thing from lambda and dark energy.
>
>I await Steven's take on this.

You should have waited for Carlip's take before you posted your noise
to this topic. Just sayin'.

>< merciful snip of confusion about what Rees wrote>

Then you should have snipped your confusion. Tu quoque back atcha,
asshole.

<restoration of dishonest snip of what I wrote>


>>Rees makes another claim which sounds contradictory, that if the

>>value for cosmic expansion (lambda) was just a tiny bit different,

>>galaxies and stars and planets could not have formed. My

>>understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to the
>>volume of spacetime and dark energy. If that is so, the value of
>>lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the

>>early universe. Instead, my understanding is the expansion

>>immediately after Inflation was dominated by radiation pressure, which
>>is an entirely different thing from lambda and dark energy.
>>

>>I claim no particular expertise on this topic, which is a challenge
>>when someone like Martin Reese makes claims which appear to be
>>contrary to what I have read elsewhere. Since your attention is
>>focused on this topic, will you take some time to post a clarification
>>of the questions I raised above?

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>U. of South Carolina at Columbia
>http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos

After reading your noise in this topic, my impression is your
employers shouldn't let you teach anything more rigorous than
Introductory Astrology.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 5:10:02 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/11/19 1:07 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 10:35:02 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> On 7/10/19 7:34 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
> >>> is increasing. [...]
> >>
> >> That's another interesting theological point that needs to be
> >> considered. If the universe is fine-tuned, that means it was literally
> >> designed to fall apart.
> >
> >
> > Is this some sort of joke?
> >
> > What's theological about this unintelligible second sentence of yours?
>
> The expansion of the universe is accelerating inexorably, so that
> eventually the universe will fly apart.

Not according to the most recent change of opinions. Galaxies will stay
in one piece, and maybe even our Local Group will remain intact, but
the more distant galaxies will be beyond our "horizon."

> As I recall, this means
> ultimately the disintegration of all matter.

None of the fine tuning constants imply that AFAIK. What does
predict it is the conjectured disintegration of protons. But
the hypothesis that favored that conjecture also predicted a
certain half-life of protons, and that seems to be back on the drawing board.


You need to start reading some serious science, not just the
popularizations you come across on the internet.


Are you even aware of the good old fashioned long-range prediction
that IS about as certain as the common descent of earth life?
I'm referring to all the stars eventually becoming cold dead hulks
because all their nuclear fuel and all their heat of contraction
becoming exhausted. Also all radioactive elements will eventually
have decayed into stable ones.

THIS universe will become inhospitable to life somewhat earlier.
But then, if you take the possibility of a multiverse seriously,
that need not signal the end of ALL life.

> To me, that does not sound like design,

...because you are stuck on the notion of the designer being a
supernatural, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God?

If so, you've missed the boat on what the Theory of Intelligent
Design is all about, and you are (gleefully?) stacking the deck
against the existence of a designer of our own little universe.

> unless there are customers around to replace this one for a
> new, improved universe.

New is good enough, as long as things are fine-tuned to about the
extent they are in our universe.

Once you set your sights on a possible designer that can be defended
against all comers, like mine, you can let go of your bias towards
demanding a defense of a God whose defenders are greatly handicapped
by assuming too much for it.

I don't mean that the possible designer can be convincingly argued
to actually exist. Atheists and I are in two impregnable citadels,
and none of their arguments hold water against my ray of hope that
a designer of our universe exists. Even one like God in a not-too-literal
interpretation of the Bible, such as the idea of hell being softened
as C.S. Lewis softened it in _The Great Divorce_.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math.

U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 5:30:03 PM UTC-4, Ernest Major wrote:
> On 11/07/2019 22:08, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 7/11/19 1:07 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 10:35:02 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >>> On 7/10/19 7:34 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
> >>>>   >
> >>>> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
> >>>> is increasing.  [...]
> >>>
> >>> That's another interesting theological point that needs to be
> >>> considered.  If the universe is fine-tuned, that means it was literally
> >>> designed to fall apart.
> >>
> >>
> >> Is this some sort of joke?
> >>
> >> What's theological about this unintelligible second sentence of yours?
> >
> > The expansion of the universe is accelerating inexorably, so that
> > eventually the universe will fly apart.  As I recall, this means
> > ultimately the disintegration of all matter.  To me, that does not sound
> > like design, unless there are customers around to replace this one for a
> > new, improved universe.
> >
>
> Without the Big Rip, the universe is "fine tuned" to support life for
> only a minuscule proportion of its existence, as well as only in a
> minuscule proportion of its volume, regardless of any accelerating
> expansion. With the Big Rip we have a problem in defining the duration
> of the universe, due to the singularity at its end.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip

Everything you said above is true, as far as it goes. But the Big Rip
is out of favor at present, with opinion shifting towards the alternative
I mentioned to Mark a few minutes ago.

>
> Without the Big Rip we still have the disintegration of all matter, as
> protons decay

...according to a hypothesis that had as many convinced as were
convinced a century ago that continents can't drift. But that
hypothesis has sprung some leaks, as I pointed out to Mark.

> positrons (and pions, which then decay to photons), which
> then annihilate by collision with electrons, leaving a universe without
> a baryonic component.
>
> --
> alias Ernest Major

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

Steve, it looks like you and I are on very different posting schedules,
so I'd like to mention something before I quit posting for today.

You never replied to the following post of mine, which responded
to some conclusions you drew about the Hartle-Hawking proposal
for our universe having been "created by quantum tunneling from `nothing'."

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/xoFjEHnBJ3c/GMzWXoT4AwAJ
Subject: Re: And thus God spoke to J.LyonLayden
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 12:20:22 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <ed96fc3f-5b84-4790...@googlegroups.com>

I think it dovetails nicely with this thread, as the following
excerpt indicates:

> I can predict the spectrum of
> fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

Ah, a spectrum. Does that mean there are many different
possible universes created by quantum tunneling, some
with the basic constants very different from those in ours?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Ron Dean]

Carlip introduced "life as we know it" as an transient or a conditional
factor. If true, the matter of evidence becomes significant. Another
kind of life is unknown and unsupported by any evidence. Therefore, it
seems to me, this changes nothing. It's just another unknown, but carbon
based life is a known factor. Consequently, physics cannot have been
misstated.

[jillery]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 13:20:55 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>
wrote:

>On 7/11/2019 5:34 AM, Steven Carlip wrote:
>> On 7/11/19 4:34 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
>>> On 7/10/2019 5:36 PM, Mohammad Nur Syamsu wrote:
>>>> In all probability things like universal constants represent main points
>>>> in the structure of mathematics itself. So as that one could derive
>>>> the main laws of the universe sitting in a cave doing math,
>>>> not measuring anything. It's probably not fine tuning.
>>
>>> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
>>> is increasing. The cosmological constant or dark energy, is pushing
>>> galaxies apart, this force is of a known value. It's also known that
>>> the value could not have varied by more than a factor of 1 part in
>>> 10^120 parts. How did the cosmological constant arrive with such an
>>> extremely precise value?
>>
>>> It is also known that if the value had varied by +/_ 1 or 2 parts the
>>> universe would have expanded too fast for stars and galaxies to form
>>> or too slow and a big crunch would have occurred. Hence no heavy metals
>>> and no life;
>>
>> You've misstated the physics here.  The correct statement is that for
>> life as we know it to exist (and assuming no other changes in other
>> fundamental constants):
> >
>But can we assume that any change would not affect other constants?

Aren't you making that assumption when you discuss changing only the
value of the cosmological constant?

>I can understand that if gravity were weaker or stronger, then this
>change in the strength in gravity could be compensated for.
>>
>> (1) if the cosmological constant is positive, its logarithm must be
>> less than about -120.  Anything from -120 to -infinity would do.
> >
>This would change the cosmological constant from what it actually is!
>And this alteration would reduce the chances of life to zero.
>>
>> (2) if the cosmological constant is negative, the logarithm of its
>> absolute value must be less than about -120.  Again, anything from
>> -120 to -infinity would do.
>>
>> These are enormous ranges of allowed values.  There's a mystery in
>> the physics, but it's a much more subtle one -- we would naively
>> expect quantum corrections that would take the cosmological constant
>> outside these ranges, and we don't understand why that doesn't
>> happen.But this has to do with quantum gravity, a subject that we
>> know very little about in general.
> >
>I know that quantum mechanics explains all kinds of things that could
>not be explained before. But it's weird, and it seems that if you follow
>the rules it doesn't make sense. In quantum mechanics an object could
>exist in many states at the same time. And this is dumb.

Why do you think the quantum world should make any sense to you? As
Dawkins pointed out, your mind is wired to make sense of Middle World:

<https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe>

And as Feynman liked to quip, "If you think you understand quantum
physics, then you don't understand quantum physics."

[jillery]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 16:15:51 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>

You're conflating different periods of time and different events.
Einstein introduced his non-zero cosmological constant to his
equations in 1917, and abandoned it in 1929, all before Wikipedia's
time period. This is why most physicists during that period assumed
the cosmological constant to be zero

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant
>>
>>>> Einstein's "biggest mistake" was not the value he added, but that he
>>>> failed to heed the implication of his own equations, that the universe
>>>> is not static but expanding.
>>>>
>>> True, but this is understood.
>>
>>
>> True, but this is not what you wrote.
>>
>Ok, but I knew this.

It would help if what you wrote more closely matched what you say you
knew. Just sayin'.

>>>> Since Einstein's value was an ad-hoc fudge factor, it is only
>>>> coincidentally related to the value to which Susskind refers. The
>>>> lamda described by Susskind is the repulsive force of spacetime itself
>>>> AKA vacuum energy AKA dark energy.
>>>>
>>> I disagree. The value Susskind and Weinberg gave was the difference
>>> between Einstein's zero and the actual value of the dark energy force,
>>> which is forcing galaxies apart. Allthough the value is extremely small
>>> IE .000000....(120 zeros)...01.
>>> Einstein's zero value was the reference point. And that's the difference.
>>
>> I have listened to your cited videos several times, and I could find
>> nothing which sounds remotely close to what you describe above. Of
>> course, I could have missed it. Cite a time-stamp where they say what
>> you say. Or cite anything from any source which documents same.
>>
>The value Susskind and Weinberg gave, and the zero Einstein needed,both
>values were meant to describe the cosmological constant (which is the
>universal expanding force) and the the value given by Susskind is
>the difference from zero. I've been wrong before, but Jill, this makes
>senseto me. >

Why must I repeat my request. Cite the time in your video, or a
publication, where Susskind says as you describe. Or stop claiming
that he said it. Pick your poison.

>>>> A problem is, when physicists sum up the zero-point vacuum energies of
>>>> all the quantum fields known in nature, it gives an repulsive force
>>>> 120 orders of magnitude greater than what cosmologists observe. This
>>>> is why it's called the worst theoretical prediction in the history of
>>>> physics.
>>>>
>>>> Since lambda is a function of energy per unit of spacetime, the total
>>>> amount of dark energy increases as the universe expands. The
>>>> expansion rate of spacetime is a ratio of the repulsive force of dark
>>>> energy and the attractive forces of baryonic and dark matter. Since
>>>> this total amount of baryonic and dark matter is constant, this
>>>> necessarily means that the expansion rate changed over time.
>>>>
>>> Stars, galaxies are attracted to each other by gravity, as they move
>>> further further apart the force of gravity decreases with increasing
>>> distance between them, there is no evidence that dark energy increases.
>>> There is no source for increasing dark energy. After some 13 (?) billion
>>> years after the Big Bang, according to Martin Rees the rate of expansion
>>> is near "unity" with the mathematical model. (not his exact wording)
>>> But it's close as I remember it.
>>
>>
>> Here's a short video of Martin Reese describing his six numbers:
>>
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiCUnVtCHk4>
>>
>> @1:51 Reese refers to the 1998 discovery of dark energy's
>> "anti-gravity" "destined to become ever more dominant over gravity and
>> other forces", which directly contradicts your comments above
> >
>Maybe so, but as I understand it, if the dark energy is constant,

Yes, the evidence is consistent with a dark energy whose value is
constant per unit of spacetime. As the universe expands, the amount
of spacetime between clusters of galaxies increases, and so too does
the amount of dark energy between them.

>but
>there is increasing distance between galaxies: distance automatically
>lessens the pull of gravity between galaxies, In Dr Rees words," the
>anti gravity force becomes dominant over gravity and other forces as the
>universe become ever darker and emptier, So yes, over time
>dark energy will tend to speed up the expansion of the universe as
>galaxies become further and further apart or as the universe becomes
>ever darker and emptier. And this is real and this has been the case.

You're conflating different phenomena. Yes, the effects of gravity
decrease with distance. But that means gravity slows expansion more
slowly. Even the complete absence of gravity would not cause
expansion to accelerate. In order to do that, what is needed is
something like the repulsive force of dark energy.

>OK but this does not explain how the six constants explained by Dr Rees
>arrived at their values, but they were imprinted at the moment of the
>Big Bang. The precision of these number spells design.

The precision of the numbers is how precisely they are measured, not
how precisely they must be. As Carlip explained, in order to know the
latter, you would need multiple examples, of universes which work and
universes which don't work. Once again, all we have is one sample,
which can't justify the assertions you make here about physical
constants.

>But Dr Rees,
>Susskind, Hawking, Dawkins and others turn to the multiverse.
>If there is an infinite number of universes, then it's just luck that
>we happen to reside in one with just the right laws of physics or
>constants. We won the lottery.

Once again, we necessarily exist in a universe whose physical
constants allow our existence. If physical constants didn't allow our
existence, we necessarily would not be here to make these posts. What
a multiverse allows is for the existence of a range of values, which
makes it more likely that at least one of them would allow our
existence. That's all. It has nothing to do with luck.

>In words of Benard Carr:
>"If you don't want God you better have a multiverse."
>>
>>> From: Just Six Numbers

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 5:40:02 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:06:40 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <nyik...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 11:50:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> >> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:34:11 +0200, Steven Carlip
> >
> >> Thank you for this clarification of the point, which addresses Reese's
> >> expressed claim that the value of the cosmological constant is too
> >> small to have happened by chance.
> >
> >I think you are confusing Rees [not Reese] with Susskind here.
>
>
> You think incorrectly.

Then I believe you are wrong. I haven't read the entire book that you
belatedly associate with your comments in your preceding post,
but I've read a lot of it, and I haven't run across anything remotely
like the sweeping conclusion you attribute to Rees.

> Rees wrote "Just Six Numbers", not Susskind.

Thanks for identifying your source below -- a YouTube lecture by Rees,
not the book. But you still haven't documented anything remotely
like that sweeping claim.

>
> But thank you for pointing out that I misspelled his name. That's the
> kind of penetrating criticism for which you are justifiably famous.

Denigrating Dr. Dr. Kleinman style *non sequitur* noted.

>
> >> Reese makes another claim which sounds contradictory, that if the
> >> value for cosmic expansion (lambda) was just a tiny bit different,
> >> galaxies and stars and planets could not have formed.
> >
> >Rees makes THAT statement about Omega, not lambda, being too *low*.
> >He also writes that if it were too *high*, "the universe would have collapsed long ago."
>
>
> Rees wrote about Lambda as I described above:

... except that you said "a tiny bit different," which is not
equivalent to "not very small" and suggests a tiny bit smaller
is as bad as a tiny bit bigger.

> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiCUnVtCHk4>
> (Rees reading from his book)
> ****************************
> @2:10
> Fortunately for us, Lambda is very small. Otherwise its effect would
> have stopped galaxies and stars from forming, and cosmic evolution
> would have been stifled before it could even begin.
> ****************************

>
> >> My understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to the
> >> volume of spacetime and dark energy. If that is so, the value of
> >> lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the
> >> early universe.
> >
> >You are looking at lambda in isolation, whereas the right way to look
> >at this issue is to treat it together with Omega. See my
> >own reply to Steven's post here.
>
>
> Your "own reply" is confused, as is your comment above.

You go off on an irrelevant tangent instead of supporting this
disparaging claim.

> It's IDists
> who argue to change a single physical constant in isolation.

As did you, which is why I wrote what I did above. Also in the
reply which you are disparaging, I acknowledged
this while pointing out that Steve was making a dubious exception
of his own:

> assuming no other changes in other
> fundamental constants):

Ay, there's the rub. The usual misconception is that any adjustment
in other constants will work to the advantage of the debunkers
of fine-tuning, but in this case, another basic constant,
Omega, works against them.

I overstated things a bit by "any adjustment" but since the IDers
almost never adjust other constants, I was talking about the
vast majority of adjustments that have been made in e.g.,
"The Skeptical Inquirer".

> Most
> cosmologists I have read understand that claims of "failure" are based
> on that assumption, and so instead recognize that different
> *combinations* of values are more relevant.

Yup, just as I pointed out above when you talked about lambda and
lambda alone in the sentence I corrected.

>
>
> >> Instead, my understanding is the expansion
> >> immediately after Inflation was dominated by radiation pressure, which
> >> is an entirely different thing from lambda and dark energy.
> >
> >I await Steven's take on this.
>
>
> You should have waited for Carlip's take before you posted your noise
> to this topic.

Your idiotic put-down is typical of your perennial vendetta against me.

> Just sayin'.

Also symptomatic of your vendetta is this attempt to normalize
your juvenile put-down.


<snip several juvenile baseless put-downs by you>

> >>Rees makes another claim which sounds contradictory, that if the
> >>value for cosmic expansion (lambda) was just a tiny bit different,
> >>galaxies and stars and planets could not have formed. My
> >>understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to the
> >>volume of spacetime and dark energy.

You really are a glutton for punishment, restoring this ignorant criticism
of Rees that I mercifully snipped.

> >>If that is so, the value of
> >>lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the
> >>early universe.

You may think that the following proves what you wrote just now,
but it doesn't. The expansion before and during inflation needs
to be reckoned with.

> >>Instead, my understanding is the expansion
> >>immediately after Inflation was dominated by radiation pressure, which
> >>is an entirely different thing from lambda and dark energy.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math.

Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Glenn]

Leonard seems to be in a pickle.

"Without any explanation of nature’s fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID."

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/interview-with-lenny-susskind/

[jillery]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 22:29:29 +0100, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>On 11/07/2019 22:08, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/11/19 1:07 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 10:35:02 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>> On 7/10/19 7:34 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
>>>>>   >
>>>>> Regardless of how the values came about, the expansion of the universe
>>>>> is increasing.  [...]
>>>>
>>>> That's another interesting theological point that needs to be
>>>> considered.  If the universe is fine-tuned, that means it was literally
>>>> designed to fall apart.
>>>
>>>
>>> Is this some sort of joke?
>>>
>>> What's theological about this unintelligible second sentence of yours?
>>
>> The expansion of the universe is accelerating inexorably, so that
>> eventually the universe will fly apart.  As I recall, this means
>> ultimately the disintegration of all matter.  To me, that does not sound
>> like design, unless there are customers around to replace this one for a
>> new, improved universe.
>>
>
>Without the Big Rip, the universe is "fine tuned" to support life for
>only a minuscule proportion of its existence, as well as only in a
>minuscule proportion of its volume, regardless of any accelerating
>expansion. With the Big Rip we have a problem in defining the duration
>of the universe, due to the singularity at its end.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip

My understanding is, the Big Rip refers to dark matters overcoming all
other physical forces over time. This is based on an assumption that
dark matter density increases over time. However, there is no
evidence of that.

Instead, the best evidence is that dark matter is constant per unit
volume of spacetime. This means that objects which are
gravitationally bound will remain so. Which means that over time, our
visible universe will consist of a single large galaxy, very similar
to the cosmological model assumed by astronomers before Hubble.

>Without the Big Rip we still have the disintegration of all matter, as
>protons decay positrons (and pions, which then decay to photons), which
>then annihilate by collision with electrons, leaving a universe without
>a baryonic component.

My understanding is, the best evidence suggests that protons don't
decay. Wikipedia says that if protons decay at all, it is limited to
a half-life no less than 1.67×10^34 years.

However, entropy has the final say. Unless there is some currently
unknown means to reverse entropy, the Universe must eventually reach a
point where all matter and energy are evenly distributed everywhere.
Once that happens, then nothing can happen, and time will cease to
have meaning. ISTM that condition would qualify for Mark Isaak's
"falling apart".

[jillery]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 16:30:43 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos

<nyik...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 5:40:02 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:06:40 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyik...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 11:50:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:34:11 +0200, Steven Carlip
>> >
>> >> Thank you for this clarification of the point, which addresses Reese's
>> >> expressed claim that the value of the cosmological constant is too
>> >> small to have happened by chance.
>> >
>> >I think you are confusing Rees [not Reese] with Susskind here.
>>
>>
>> You think incorrectly.
>
>Then I believe you are wrong. I haven't read the entire book that you
>belatedly associate with your comments in your preceding post,

I had no idea anyone would waste their time to challenge the source.
It's not as if it's especially relevant. But then I didn't account
for your compulsion to post your repetitive irrelevant spew.

>but I've read a lot of it, and I haven't run across anything remotely
>like the sweeping conclusion you attribute to Rees.
>
>
>> Rees wrote "Just Six Numbers", not Susskind.
>
>Thanks for identifying your source below -- a YouTube lecture by Rees,
>not the book.

The video I cited is of Rees reading from that book, as I previously
noted. Try to pay attention, if only for the novelty of the
experience.

<snip your repetitive irrelevant spew>

>> >I await Steven's take on this.

If only you would.


<snip your remaining repetitive irrelevant spew>

[Steven Carlip]

On 7/12/19 12:13 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Steve, it looks like you and I are on very different posting
> schedules,

That's undoubtedly true -- my posting schedule is "when I don't
have anything better to do."

> so I'd like to mention something before I quit posting for today.

> You never replied to the following post of mine, which responded to
> some conclusions you drew about the Hartle-Hawking proposal for our
> universe having been "created by quantum tunneling from `nothing'."

And I will undoubtedly not respond to some other posts of yours.
Usenet is not exactly at the top of my list of priorities. But
for now...

> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/xoFjEHnBJ3c/GMzWXoT4AwAJ
>
>
Subject: Re: And thus God spoke to J.LyonLayden
> Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 12:20:22 -0800 (PST) Message-ID:
> <ed96fc3f-5b84-4790...@googlegroups.com>

> I think it dovetails nicely with this thread, as the following
> excerpt indicates:

>> I can predict the spectrum of fluctuations of the cosmic microwave
>> background radiation (CMB).

> Ah, a spectrum. Does that mean there are many different possible
> universes created by quantum tunneling, some with the basic
> constants very different from those in ours?

No, it means nothing like that. The CMB is radiation left over
from the very hot, dense early universe. It has a spectrum --
different strengths (technically different amounts of power) at
different frequencies. This is approximately a smooth curve,
what's known as a black body spectrum, but it has fluctuations
that came from physical processes in the very early universe,
including quantum fluctuations. These lead to a very elaborate
structure -- see for example
https://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/387566/1753103/Planck_2018_spectra.pdf/f0dc6f92-53a9-b7de-0415-413c6ea214c5
-- which is both measured and predicted extremely accurately.

This has nothing to do with variation of fundamental constants.
There are some models that predict quantum tunneling to universes
with different constants (and different elementary particles and
forces), but these are much more speculative, and certainly haven't
been experimentally or observationally confirmed.

Steve Carlip

[Steven Carlip]

On 7/11/19 5:58 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
> On 7/10/2019 4:10 PM, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:11:32 -0500, Don Cates
>> <cate...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:

[...]
>>> This is a copy of a post by Steve Carlip pertinent to this topic.

>>> ----------------***-----------------
>>> [jillery]
>>>> Some people use "fine tuning" to mean some physical constants can't
>>>> vary their extant value without causing such dramatic changes, that
>>>> life or even the universe itself could not exist.  Based on that,
>>>> they infer these values had to have been purposefully set by an
>>>> intelligent Agent, in order to create a universe that would allow
>>>> life.

>>>> My understanding is that such an inference is based on other
>>>> assumptions.  Some of them are that the extant values could be
>>>> anything else,  and that other physical constants could not adjust
>>>> to compensate.  These assumptions can't be tested at this time.

>>> That's right, but there's another assumption that comes even earlier:
>>> that we know the right way to ask the question.

>>> Let me give a simple example, for the case of the cosmological constant,
>>> which I'll call L (short for the usual "Lambda").  It's often said that
>>> L has a value (in certain "natural" units) of 10^{-120}, and that it
>>> were slightly larger -- say, 10^{-118} -- life wouldn't exist.  Phrased
>>> this way, the value looks very fine tuned.

>>> Suppose, though, that you rephrase the problem in terms of the logarithm
>>> of the cosmological constant. Then the "anthropic" claim is that for
>>> life to exist, -log(L) can be anywhere from 118 to infinity.  Your
>>> reaction to this is probably, meh: a range from 118 to infinity is huge
>>> (infinite, in fact), and 118 isn't such a bizarre limit.

> OK, but this does not address the fact that this is dark energy and
> if the values were slightly different the universe itself would fail;

Yes, it addresses precisely that question.

> Either it would collapse back on itself or expand to fast for stars
> and galaxies to form, hence no heavy metals and no life. Furthermore
> his number of 118 to infinity certainly would spell doom for life.
No. If the number were *less than* about 118, that would cause either
recollapse or expansion too rapid for the universe to look much like
it does now. Anything from 118 to infinity would be fine; in fact,
there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.

The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.

Steve Carlip

[Peter Nyikos]

I "feed the troll" for what I hope will be the last time on this thread.

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 8:35:02 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 16:30:43 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <nyik...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 5:40:02 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> >> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:06:40 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyik...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 11:50:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> >> >> On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:34:11 +0200, Steven Carlip
> >> >
> >> >> Thank you for this clarification of the point, which addresses Reese's
> >> >> expressed claim that the value of the cosmological constant is too
> >> >> small to have happened by chance.
> >> >
> >> >I think you are confusing Rees [not Reese] with Susskind here.
> >>
> >>
> >> You think incorrectly.
> >
> >Then I believe you are wrong. I haven't read the entire book that you
> >belatedly associate with your comments in your preceding post,
>
>
> I had no idea anyone would waste their time

...to reply to you, who are far along in your evolution
towards being a full time troll in reply to my posts?


> to challenge the source.

The source is you, spin-doctoring the bejesus out of a passage
that you don't even have the minimal backbone to quote.

> It's not as if it's especially relevant. But then I didn't account
> for your compulsion to post

...scientific information in reply to yourself, after you
went on record as never wanting to discuss science with me.


> your repetitive irrelevant spew.

The above is an elaborate trollish code for "including criticism of me, jillery."

The only repetitiveness occurred because you had been very repetitive, and it was solidly scientific.

You had to delete all the scientific criticism in
order to justify calling what little remains as
spew *sensu* jillery, which has been established to be a code for "personal criticism of jillery or anyone with whom jillery has bonded."

Your elaborate code has resulted in you saying numerous times
something which, decoded, runs:

If you don't want to be flamed for making
personal attacks on me, stop making personal
attacks on me. I can't see why you haven't
figured that out yet.

Of course, I had figured that out over eight years ago,
a few months after we first encountered each other. But being subjected
to torrents of injustice, deceit, and hypocrisy by you
is the price that needs to be paid to let people know what a dedicated
perpetrator of injustice and misrepresentations you are.

>
> >but I've read a lot of it, and I haven't run across anything remotely
> >like the sweeping conclusion you attribute to Rees.

All of a sudden, you are speechless here.

> >
> >> Rees wrote "Just Six Numbers", not Susskind.
> >
> >Thanks for identifying your source below -- a YouTube lecture by Rees,
> >not the book.
>
>
> The video I cited is of Rees reading from that book, as I previously
> noted.

And what you quoted from it bears no resemblance to your
sweeping allegation about what Rees wrote; it reads like something
people routine attribute to Michael Behe, for purposes of discrediting Behe.

And the earlier posts by you seemed all bent towards casting doubt on the veracity of Rees. Now that I've
made clear how bent out of shape it all was, you've
deleted it out of an instinct for self-preservation.

> Try to pay attention, if only for the novelty of the
> experience.

Are you alleging that Rees managed to get all through the book in that YouTube lecture? The smart money is that it included little more than what can be found in

http://www.ichthus.info/BigBang/Docs/Just6num.pdf

>
> <snip your repetitive irrelevant spew>

See above for how to decode this piece of trash by you.

> >> >I await Steven's take on this.
>
>
> If only you would.

Don't hold your breath. So far, he has only replied to one of my posts,
the one where he could easily give a negative answer to
a question of mine.
He has not, for instance, answered the first post I did in reply to him,
in which I posed some really tough questions about lambda
just prior to my virtual .sig.


Unfortunately for you, nobody has replied to your posts, so Don Cates cannot
see that I am stooping so low as to "feed the troll."

Are you catering to people who have killfiled me but not yourself?
I can't think of any other reason why you should be so transparently evasive and dishonest.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 06:50:31 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyik...@gmail.com> continues to ejaculate his repetitive irrelevant
spew from his puckered sphincter:

<snip for focus>

>The source is you, spin-doctoring the bejesus out of a passage
>that you don't even have the minimal backbone to quote.

I cited the video and specified the time-stamp and transcribed it
word-for-word. What else do you need?

Apparently, now that Carlip has schooled you about your stupidity, you
seek to take it out on me. I am not your dog or your wife. Grow up.

[Steven Carlip]

We shouldn't assume that the change wouldn't affect other constants.
But this means that there's *more* opportunity for universes that
could have life as we know it. You're exactly right here: changes
in some constants *can* be compensated for by changes in others.

>> (1) if the cosmological constant is positive, its logarithm must
>> be less than about -120. Anything from -120 to -infinity would
>> do.

> This would change the cosmological constant from what it actually
> is! And this alteration would reduce the chances of life to zero.

No! Any value less than -120 for the logarithm would still allow
a universe pretty much like the one we're in. It's only values
greater than 120 that could cause problems. In fact, a value of
less than -120 would probably make the universe better for life
-- there would be more chances for stars and planets to form.

>> (2) if the cosmological constant is negative, the logarithm of its
>> absolute value must be less than about -120. Again, anything from
>> -120 to -infinity would do.

>> These are enormous ranges of allowed values. There's a mystery in
>> the physics, but it's a much more subtle one -- we would naively
>> expect quantum corrections that would take the cosmological
>> constant outside these ranges, and we don't understand why that
>> doesn't happen.But this has to do with quantum gravity, a subject
>> that we know very little about in general.

> I know that quantum mechanics explains all kinds of things that could
> not be explained before. But it's weird, and it seems that if you
> follow the rules it doesn't make sense. In quantum mechanics an
> object could exist in many states at the same time. And this is
> dumb.

You can call it dumb if you want, but it's one of the best tested
theories in existence. The computer you're reading this on only
works because of quantum mechanics; so does all modern electronics.
Some very smart people have been trying to find an alternative to
quantum mechanics for close to a century, and no one has succeeded.

Steve Carlip

[Steven Carlip]

On 7/12/19 1:57 AM, jillery wrote:

[...]

> My understanding is, the Big Rip refers to dark matters overcoming
> all other physical forces over time. This is based on an assumption
> that dark matter density increases over time. However, there is no
> evidence of that.

Dark energy, not dark matter, but this is otherwise basically right.

> Instead, the best evidence is that dark matter is constant per unit
> volume of spacetime. This means that objects which are
> gravitationally bound will remain so.

Again, dark energy, not dark matter.

> Which means that over time, our visible universe will consist of a
> single large galaxy, very similar to the cosmological model assumed
> by astronomers before Hubble.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "a single large galaxy." If
dark energy is constant (i.e., is a "cosmological constant"), then
eventually the universe will expand so much that we will be able to
see nothing beyond our own galaxy, and perhaps some of its near
neighbors.

>> Without the Big Rip we still have the disintegration of all matter,
>> as protons decay positrons (and pions, which then decay to
>> photons), which then annihilate by collision with electrons,
>> leaving a universe without a baryonic component.

> My understanding is, the best evidence suggests that protons don't
> decay. Wikipedia says that if protons decay at all, it is limited
> to a half-life no less than 1.67×10^34 years.

Depends how long you're willing to wait. We're pretty sure protons
will *eventually* decay.

I recommend Adams and Laughlin's book _The Five Ages of the Universe_
(though apparently an update is in the works).

Steve Carlip

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/10/19 6:29 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/10/19 9:05 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
>> [snip fine-tuning argument, already rebutted by Steve Carlip]
>
> A quick question for you, Ron: What is the probability (best estimate)
> of intelligent life existing in the universe?
>
> Anyone who understands probability can give an answer accurate to at
> least two significant figures, supported by easily obtainable objective
> evidence.  Can you?  More important, can you explain how the figure is
> arrived at?

Still awaiting an answer, Mr. Dean.

This is not an idle challenge. The answer forms the very basis for the
Anthropic Principle. Someone talking about the principle might want to
show that he has some understanding of it.

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 17:01:57 +0200, Steven Carlip
<car...@physics.ucdavis.edu> wrote:

>On 7/12/19 1:57 AM, jillery wrote:
>
>[...]
>> My understanding is, the Big Rip refers to dark matters overcoming
>> all other physical forces over time. This is based on an assumption
>> that dark matter density increases over time. However, there is no
>> evidence of that.
>
>Dark energy, not dark matter, but this is otherwise basically right.

Urk. I blame Old-timers' Disease. Thank you for recognizing what I
meant.

>> Instead, the best evidence is that dark matter is constant per unit
>> volume of spacetime. This means that objects which are
>> gravitationally bound will remain so.
>
>Again, dark energy, not dark matter.

Urk Urk

>> Which means that over time, our visible universe will consist of a
>> single large galaxy, very similar to the cosmological model assumed
>> by astronomers before Hubble.
>
>I'm not quite sure what you mean by "a single large galaxy." If
>dark energy is constant (i.e., is a "cosmological constant"), then
>eventually the universe will expand so much that we will be able to
>see nothing beyond our own galaxy, and perhaps some of its near
>neighbors.

As you know, the Milky Way is currently part of the Local Cluster of
galaxies, all of which are gravitationally bound to each other. My
understanding is, by the time dark energy (got it right this time)
pushes all the other galaxies beyond the light horizon, the galaxies
of the Local Cluster will have merged into one but very much larger
galaxy. That is the "one galaxy" to which I refer above.

>>> Without the Big Rip we still have the disintegration of all matter,
>>> as protons decay positrons (and pions, which then decay to
>>> photons), which then annihilate by collision with electrons,
>>> leaving a universe without a baryonic component.
>
>> My understanding is, the best evidence suggests that protons don't
>> decay. Wikipedia says that if protons decay at all, it is limited
>> to a half-life no less than 1.67×10^34 years.
>
>Depends how long you're willing to wait. We're pretty sure protons
>will *eventually* decay.

1.67 * 10^34 years definitely qualifies as "eventually".

>I recommend Adams and Laughlin's book _The Five Ages of the Universe_
>(though apparently an update is in the works).
>
>Steve Carlip

I am looking for it as I write this.

[Ron Dean]

On 7/12/2019 11:33 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/10/19 6:29 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/10/19 9:05 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
>>> [snip fine-tuning argument, already rebutted by Steve Carlip]
>>
>> A quick question for you, Ron: What is the probability (best estimate)
>> of intelligent life existing in the universe?
>>
>> Anyone who understands probability can give an answer accurate to at
>> least two significant figures, supported by easily obtainable
>> objective evidence.  Can you?  More important, can you explain how the
>> figure is arrived at?
>

Does human intelligence count?

>
> Still awaiting an answer, Mr. Dean.
>

Of course, several scientist have subscribed to the multiverse
hypothesis. I believe they have chosen this as a way out from
actually contemplating the very possibility that the universe
was designed for life. So, I would say the possibility of a
designer is the inverse of the reality of this multiverse.

"If you don't want God, you had better have a multiverse" - Bernard Carr

This, it seem are the two(2) most logical options.

>
> This is not an idle challenge.  The answer forms the very basis for the
> Anthropic Principle.  Someone talking about the principle might want to
> show that he has some understanding of it.
>

[Mark Isaak]

You didn't answer the question, but what you said indicates that you
don't know it.

The probability of intelligent life existing in this universe is exactly
one. That is the case whether the universe is designed, occurred
naturally, or appeared last Tuesday as the result of a young god's
failed science fair project. The probability of *any* event having
occurred is one after it has occurred.

The probability of the universe being able to support life is a question
you cannot ask and expect an accurate answer, because there is a hidden
assumption in the question. Really, you are asking for the probability
that the universe can support life, given that there is already life
here to ask the question. And the answer to that, although well known,
tells you nothing you didn't already know.

[Peter Nyikos]

That is a mathematical parlor trick. You are saying, in effect,
that lambda HAS TO BE NONZERO in any conceivable universe.

That is because the logarithm of zero is undefined. It isn't even infinity:
the logarithm function in the extended complex plane has an essential
singularity at infinity.

In other words, every physical universe of the multiverse MUST have
some dark energy, no matter how little.

Or, to put it another way, you are assuming that Einstein wasted a
good part of his life by deciding that he had made the biggest mistake
of his life in assuming that there was a cosmological constant.

If he had had your "insight" into dark energy, he would
have stuck to his guns, and campaigned to the end of his life for
his original hypothesis of a cosmological constant.

> >>> Then the "anthropic" claim is that for
> >>> life to exist, -log(L) can be anywhere from 118 to infinity.

Or undefined and undefinable, as all physicists tacitly assumed
until dark energy reared its <cough> logically inevitable <cough> head.

> >>> Your reaction to this is probably, meh: a range from 118 to infinity is huge
> >>> (infinite, in fact), and 118 isn't such a bizarre limit.

"Your" refers mainly to those people who are emotionally predisposed
towards atheism. Also anyone who has not seen through your mathematical parlor trick.

You can include me until a few minutes ago, when I noticed the absence
of the absolute value around L. Then I realized that your statement below
was deficient, and one insight led to another, until the elementary
facts you see above dawned on me.

>
> > OK, but this does not address the fact that this is dark energy and
> > if the values were slightly different the universe itself would fail;
>
> Yes, it addresses precisely that question.

In a manner of speaking. However, R. Dean is not reading all my
posts to this thread carefully, so he does not realize that he
should be focusing on another one of the "constants", Omega,
which really does work the way described below.

> > Either it would collapse back on itself or expand to fast for stars
> > and galaxies to form, hence no heavy metals and no life. Furthermore
> > his number of 118 to infinity certainly would spell doom for life.

> No. If the number were *less than* about 118, that would cause either
> recollapse

... if L = lambda is negative, but there is no real logarithm of
any negative numbers. And you had forgotten to put the absolute
value signs around L up there.

or expansion too rapid for the universe to look much like
> it does now. Anything from 118 to infinity would be fine; in fact,
> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
>
> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.

My point is that your whole argument here needs to be
replaced by a physically meaningful argument.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS I will take my usual weekend posting break, starting some time
today. When I'm back on Monday, I hope to see that you have
made good use of the weekend. I suggest you start with the "easy"
concrete questions I asked you about dark energy and the inflationary
period, and after you've answered them, to try and *successfully* deflate the
arguments that go from fine tuning to a multiverse and/or a creator
of our universe.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 6:25:03 PM UTC-4, Bill Rogers wrote:

> On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 5:20:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
> > On 7/10/2019 4:10 PM, jillery wrote:
> > > On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:11:32 -0500, Don Cates
> > > <cate...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:
> > >

> > >> On 2019-07-10 1:09 PM, Bill Rogers wrote:

> > >>> On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 12:10:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
> > >>>> According to Professor Leonard Susskind the term
> > >>>> cosmological constant invented by Einstein which is
> > >>>> like an anti-gravity force has a very tiny value - of
> > >>>> ..0000000...(120) zeros..001.or 2, but this force also
> > >>>> called black energy is the cause of the increasing
> > >>>> expansion of our universe. Had this energy been even
> > >>>> slightly different the universe would have expanded
> > >>>> too fast or too slow for stars and galaxies to form
> > >>>> consequently, there could have been no heavy elements
> > >>>> and no life.
> > >>>> According to Dr Susskind, the value of this constant
> > >>>> could not vary more than 1 (one) part in 10 ^120 parts.
> > >>>> >
> > >>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4T2Ulv48nw
> > >>>> >
> > >>>> However, Dr susskind turns to the multiverse.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILwxUXbg_8
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Who is Dr Leonard Susskind?
> > >>>>

> > >>>> Leonard Susskind (/?s?sk?nd/; born 1940)[2][3] is an American physicist,

> > >>>> who is professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and
> > >>>> founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His
> > >>>> research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum
> > >>>> statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology.[1] He is a member of the US
> > >>>> National Academy of Sciences,[4] and the American Academy of Arts and
> > >>>> Sciences,[5] an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter
> > >>>> Institute for Theoretical Physics,[6] and a distinguished professor of
> > >>>> the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.[7]
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.[8]
> > >>>> He was the first to give a precise string-theoretic interpretation of
> > >>>> the holographic principle in 1995[9] and the first to introduce the idea
> > >>>> of the string theory landscape in 2003.[10][11]
> > >>>>
> > >>>>
> > >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskindlein Medal[13].
> > >>>>

> > >>>> ---
> > >>>> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> > >>>> https://www.avast.com/antivirus
> > >>>

> > >>> Either there's a God who fine-tuned the universe to make it come out just the way it did, or there's some physics we don't understand yet. I know where my bet is.

> > >>>
> > >> This is a copy of a post by Steve Carlip pertinent to this topic.
> > >>
> > >> ----------------***-----------------
> > >> [jillery]
> > >>> Some people use "fine tuning" to mean some physical constants can't
> > >>> vary their extant value without causing such dramatic changes, that
> > >>> life or even the universe itself could not exist.  Based on that,
> > >>> they infer these values had to have been purposefully set by an
> > >>> intelligent Agent, in order to create a universe that would allow
> > >>> life.
> > >>
> > >>> My understanding is that such an inference is based on other
> > >>> assumptions.  Some of them are that the extant values could be
> > >>> anything else,  and that other physical constants could not adjust
> > >>> to compensate.  These assumptions can't be tested at this time.
> > >>
> > >> That's right, but there's another assumption that comes even earlier:
> > >> that we know the right way to ask the question.
> > >>
> > >> Let me give a simple example, for the case of the cosmological constant,
> > >> which I'll call L (short for the usual "Lambda").  It's often said that
> > >> L has a value (in certain "natural" units) of 10^{-120}, and that it
> > >> were slightly larger -- say, 10^{-118} -- life wouldn't exist.  Phrased
> > >> this way, the value looks very fine tuned.
> > >>
> > >> Suppose, though, that you rephrase the problem in terms of the logarithm

> > >> of the cosmological constant. Then the "anthropic" claim is that for
> > >> life to exist, -log(L) can be anywhere from 118 to infinity.  Your

> > >> reaction to this is probably, meh: a range from 118 to infinity is huge
> > >> (infinite, in fact), and 118 isn't such a bizarre limit.
> > >>

> > >> So why should we pay so much attention to L, and not to log(L)? It
> > >> happens that L is the form that the constant was first written down, but
> > >> that's just an accident of history.  If we knew some physical mechanism
> > >> that determined the cosmological constant, that might tell us the
> > >> "right" version to look at.  But we don't.
> > >>
> > >> (There are, in fact, some physical arguments -- nonperturbative effects
> > >> in quantum field theory -- that are most naturally described in terms of
> > >> the square root of log(L).  This ends up telling you that for life as we
> > >> know it to exist, some quantity has to be greater than about 4.)
> > >>
> > >> The point is that we can't even start to think properly about whether
> > >> something is fine tuned without having some idea of what mechanism might
> > >> "tune" it, because taht's the only way to know exactly what is being
> > >> "tuned."
> > >>
> > >> Steve Carlip
> > >> -----------------***------------------------
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > > Thank you for finding and reposting this. That's one advantage of
> > > Dean going through the same arguments over and over; we can just
> > > repost the same replies.
> > >
> > Susskind stated there's no rational answer to this.
>
> Either there's a God who fine-tuned the universe to make it come out just as it did, or there's some physics we (including Susskind) still don't understand. I know where my bet lies.

I don't, because you never made clear whether you were betting on a
multiverse or, as I put it in an earlier reply to this sentence of yours,

[that there is] some explanation of why that constant HAD to be what it is,

and that all other values for that constant are LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE

As I pointed out to Ron Dean, the word "logically" is there because if
the explanation is some complicated physical hypothesis, that just
"kicks the can down the road" to the mystery of why that physical
hypothesis HAS to be true.


> >But the solution
> > given by several scientist is the multiverse. This would include
> > Susskind, Hawking, Dawkins, Wineberg, Brian Greene and others. If there
> > are trillions X trillions X trillions ......of other universes each with
> > it's own set of cosmological constants or laws of physics, then it's
> > just a matter of the luck - we just happened to win the lottery.


> As I'm pretty sure you've been told several times - the theories that predict multiverses were not thought up to resolve the "fine tuning problem".

But the fine tuning problem is what gives them great public appeal.


> Multiverses fell out of theories designed to explain the cosmic background radiation, the flatness of the universe and the absence of magnetic monopoles.

Those theories are only some of the attempted explanations. I'll be
reading the part of Rees's book over the weekend where he talks about
these concrete data and the conjectured connection with a multiverse.


> Multiverses were not invented as an ad hoc defense against Design.

But that is their main function here in talk.origins, because
they are directly relevant to the Theory of Intelligent Design,
which is popular with creationists.

>
> Also, you seem to have completely missed Carlip's point - he's not offering an explanation for fine tuning, he's explaining why fine tuning is a mathematical illusion,

No, he is not. For one thing, he cherry-picked the one constant lambda
and ignored the others.

More importantly, his "explanation" is a cheap parlor trick whose
ramifications he hasn't thought out carefully.

The most important ramification is that there MUST be a nonzero
cosmological constant in every conceivable universe. That is
an "insight" which eluded Einstein and would have made it child's
play for Einstein to stick to his original hypothesis, which
he "foolishly" claimed to have been his greatest mistake.

I explained this in the reply I did to Carlip less than an hour ago:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/0u86tt9vTgs/vLrtiOoGAwAJ
Subject: Re: The Ratio 1 (one) part to 10^120 parts Means Design?
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2019 10:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <5bf3d640-46d0-4b3b...@googlegroups.com>


> and he's not the only physicist who thinks so.

Maybe so, but the people who co-authored the paper you link next
are from a Department of Philosophy and a Division of Humanities
and Social Sciences.

And it shows.

>
> http://www.colyvan.com/papers/finetuning.pdf

This reads like an undergraduate essay with minimal insight into
the physics involved. If you can't come up with something better,
we'll just have to hope Steve Carlip rises to the challenge of
my *reductio* *ad* *absurdum* of his mathematical stunt.

It's no fun refuting someone so easily. I really do hope Steve
comes up with some good stuff. I have learned tremendous amounts
of genetics, biochemistry, paleontology, cosmology, physics, ... through
debates with people here in t.o. over the years.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

nyikos `at' math.sc.edu

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 10:55:02 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote
a personal attack on me by rewriting the attribution line
to me in her usual Peter Pan Syndrome way:

> On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 06:50:31 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <nyik...@gmail.com> continues to ejaculate his repetitive irrelevant
> spew from his puckered sphincter:

Translation: I am continuing to make personal attacks.

And they are eminently justifiable, unlike yours.

> <snip for focus>
>
> >The source is you, spin-doctoring the bejesus out of a passage
> >that you don't even have the minimal backbone to quote.

You are the sole source for the following disparaging comment about Rees:

Reese's expressed claim that the value of the cosmological
constant is too small to have happened by chance.

With this, you painted Rees as having made a statement typical of creationists.

>
> I cited the video and specified the time-stamp and transcribed it
> word-for-word.

"it" is the original statement out of which you have
spin-doctored the bejesus:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiCUnVtCHk4>
(Rees reading from his book)
****************************
@2:10
Fortunately for us, Lambda is very small. Otherwise its effect would
have stopped galaxies and stars from forming, and cosmic evolution
would have been stifled before it could even begin.
****************************

> What else do you need?

A statement by Rees that justifies your allegation that made him
sound like a creationist.

> Apparently, now that Carlip has schooled you about your stupidity,

Dream on, you hate-ravaged harridan. It is *I* who schooled
Carlip about two hours ago on the stupidity of his mathematical
parlor trick on which his entire case on this whole thread against the
significance of fine-tuning rests.

I did it here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/0u86tt9vTgs/vLrtiOoGAwAJ
Subject: Re: The Ratio 1 (one) part to 10^120 parts Means Design?
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2019 10:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <5bf3d640-46d0-4b3b...@googlegroups.com>

And here is a summary I did for Bill Rogers about an hour ago:

More importantly, [Carlip's] "explanation" is a cheap parlor trick whose

ramifications he hasn't thought out carefully.

The most important ramification is that there MUST be a nonzero
cosmological constant in every conceivable universe. That is
an "insight" which eluded Einstein and would have made it child's
play for Einstein to stick to his original hypothesis, which
he "foolishly" claimed to have been his greatest mistake.

It'll be VERY interesting to see whether Carlip sticks around this
thread after these revelations, and if he does, how he behaves from
here on in.

> you seek to take it out on me. I am not your dog or your wife. Grow up.

Something is rotten in the state of talk.origins, and this delusional,
juvenile, hate-driven one-liner of yours is one of the most dramatic
symptoms of that which I have seen so far.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Steven Carlip]

Nonsense. It is, in fact, a sensible choice. If the cosmological
constant is generated by nonperturbative effects in quantum field
theory, it is in fact going to be an exponential of a quantity
involving the coupling constant. See, for example, Holland and
Hollands, Class.Quant.Grav. 31 (2014) 125006, online at
https://arxiv.org/abs/1305.5191.

> That is because the logarithm of zero is undefined. It isn't even infinity:
> the logarithm function in the extended complex plane has an essential
> singularity at infinity.
> In other words, every physical universe of the multiverse MUST have
> some dark energy, no matter how little.

Right. For some mechanisms of generating a cosmological constant,
that's correct.

> Or, to put it another way, you are assuming that Einstein wasted a
> good part of his life by deciding that he had made the biggest mistake
> of his life in assuming that there was a cosmological constant.

It's doubtful that he ever said that. He certainly didn't "waste a
good part of his life" on it. In any case, it seems very likely that
the universe does, in fact, have a cosmological constant, so whether
Einstein thought it was a mistake or not a century ago doesn't really
matter.

> If he had had your "insight" into dark energy, he would
> have stuck to his guns, and campaigned to the end of his life for
> his original hypothesis of a cosmological constant.

Nonperturbative methods in quantum field theory weren't formulated
until well after Einstein's death.

>>>>>  Then the "anthropic" claim is that for
>>>>> life to exist, -log(L) can be anywhere from 118 to infinity.

> Or undefined and undefinable, as all physicists tacitly assumed
> until dark energy reared its <cough> logically inevitable <cough> head.

Try paying attention. I'm not saying it's logically inevitable. I'm
saying that since we don't know the physical cause of dark energy, we
don't know whether it's logically inevitable. That's the whole point:
making claims about the probability or improbability of some value of
Lambda is meaningless unless one knows the real physics. I don't know
whether the "right" variable to ascribe a probability distribution to
is Lambda or log|Lambda| or some other function of Lambda. NEITHER DO
YOU.
[...]

> My point is that your whole argument here needs to be
> replaced by a physically meaningful argument.

Absolutely. Do you have a physically meaningful argument? Do you
have some deeper physical understanding of the process that generates
Lambda, and what the resulting probability distribution is?

Steve Carlip

[Steven Carlip]

On 7/11/19 5:39 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[...]
> Before we get into the philosophy-of-math-and-science issues you
> brought up next [left in below] I have some very concrete questions
> about lambda.

> Has it been constant all through the history of our universe? or was
> it enormous during the inflationary period, as Reese suggested
> elsewhere?

The question is ambiguous, because physicists mean different things
by Lambda, depending on the context.

It can mean "a particular fundamental constant that occurs in the
action principle for the basic equations that describe nature."
With that definition, it is almost certainly constant in time,
though its value might depend on the energy of the process in which
it's measured. (This is true of almost all fundamental constants.)

It can mean "any physical quantity that acts approximately like the
quantity that one might call a fundamental constant." With that
definition, it almost certainly has changed in time.

> Or is the "dark energy" associated with lambda a completely different
> physical phenomenon than the "dark energy" behind the inflation?

"Dark energy" is an even more general term, for "some presently
unknown physical quantity that causes the expansion of the universe
to accelerate." A cosmological constant would be one particularly
simple form of dark energy, but there are many other possibilities.
(Present observations are consistent with dark energy being a
cosmological constant, but they're not nearly accurate enough to
claim that it is.)

The dark energy responsible for inflation is almost certainly very
different from the dark energy responsible for the present accelerated
expansion of the universe. (I say "almost" as a hedge; there are a few
attempts to explain both phenomena with the same field, but they look
very contrived, and almost no one thinks they're likely to be right.
But understanding dark energy is a huge unsolved problem, and you
should be very, very skeptical of anyone who claims to understand its
physical cause.)

Steve Carlip

[Steven Carlip]

On 7/11/19 5:47 PM, jillery wrote:

[...]

> Reese makes another claim which sounds contradictory, that if the
> value for cosmic expansion (lambda) was just a tiny bit different,
> galaxies and stars and planets could not have formed.

If "a tiny bit different" means "larger by a factor of about 100
or more," then this is roughly correct. It's correct if you imagine
that Lambda is larger and nothing else changes. If you also allow
some other parameters to change (the amplitude of primordial
density fluctuations and the baryon-to-photon ratio), it can be
larger by about a factor of 10^24. If it's smaller (but still
positive), there's no restriction. See Adams, "The Degree of
Fine-Tuning in our Universe – and Others," Phys. Rept. 807 (2019)
1-111, https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.03928, which gives a fairly
comprehensive survey.

> My understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to
> the volume of spacetime and dark energy. If that is so, the value
> of lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the
> early universe.

That depends on how large it was. Dark energy causes accelerated
expansion; if its density is too high, it can cause expansion that's
fast enough to prevent the formation of stars and galaxies. (Of
course, as I've said elsewhere, "too high" is a tricky concept.
Unless we know what determines Lambda, which we definitely don't,
we don't know what values are even possible, much less how likely
they are.)

> Instead, my understanding is the expansion
> immediately after Inflation was dominated by radiation pressure,
> which is an entirely different thing from lambda and dark energy.

That's true. The present amount of dark energy didn't become
important to the expansion rate until a few billion years ago.
But a much higher amount would have been different.

Steve Carlip

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 1:00:03 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/12/19 9:13 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
> > On 7/12/2019 11:33 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> On 7/10/19 6:29 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >>> On 7/10/19 9:05 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
> >>>> [snip fine-tuning argument, already rebutted by Steve Carlip]

In your ignorant opinion. But you live in a fool's paradise
where you can remain blissfully ignorant of why what I wrote
here shows that Carlip's "rebuttal" is a mathematical parlor trick
with no relevance to physics or to fine-tuning arguments:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/0u86tt9vTgs/vLrtiOoGAwAJ
Subject: Re: The Ratio 1 (one) part to 10^120 parts Means Design?
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2019 10:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <5bf3d640-46d0-4b3b...@googlegroups.com>


> >>>

> >>> A quick question for you, Ron: What is the probability (best
> >>> estimate) of intelligent life existing in the universe?
> >>>
> >>> Anyone who understands probability can give an answer accurate to at
> >>> least two significant figures, supported by easily obtainable
> >>> objective evidence.  Can you?  More important, can you explain how
> >>> the figure is arrived at?
> > >
> > Does human intelligence count?

This question sailed right over your polemic-primed head.

> >> Still awaiting an answer, Mr. Dean.
> > >
> > Of course, several scientist have subscribed to the multiverse
> > hypothesis. I believe they have chosen this as a way out from
> > actually contemplating the very possibility that the universe
> > was designed for life. So, I would say the possibility of a
> > designer is the inverse of the reality of this multiverse.

This is quite a good answer from R. Dean, and your response
indicates that you have no aptitude for understanding his answer.

> > "If you don't want God, you had better have a multiverse" - Bernard Carr
> >
> > This, it seem are the two(2) most logical options.

Yup.

> >> This is not an idle challenge. 

Yes, it is, coming from you.

> >>The answer forms the very basis for
> >> the Anthropic Principle. 

That's like DR. Dr. Kleinman saying that two papers of his in _Statistics in Medicine_
form the very basis of evolutionary theory.

> >> Someone talking about the principle might
> >> want to show that he has some understanding of it.
>
> You didn't answer the question, but what you said indicates that you
> don't know it.

Au contraire, his question of whether human intelligence
counts is almost a sure-fire proof that he knew what
silly game you were playing.

>
> The probability of intelligent life existing in this universe is exactly
> one.

As every smart-alecky high school student knows: if something is true NOW,
it has a probability of one.

On the other hand, if it was false at some point in time, then you
have to ask: is the probability 0 (zero) for it going to be true forever?

That is where REAL probability starts, and THIS is why the anthropic
principle naturally segues into the question: what is the probability
of a universe having the right values for various constants (especially
the six of Rees) being favorable for the beginning of life AND for
its evolving into intelligent life?

That is a question that you may not even have the aptitude to
understand. That is why you falsely state the issues like this
to R. Dean:

> The probability of the universe being able to support life is a question
> you cannot ask and expect an accurate answer, because there is a hidden
> assumption in the question. Really, you are asking for the probability
> that the universe can support life,

You are parasitizing a sophomoric argument of which Paul Gans
was tremendously proud, by adding the following:

> given that there is already life
> here to ask the question. And the answer to that, although well known,
> tells you nothing you didn't already know.

Keep up your love affair with this sophomoric argument. Maybe
Steven Carlip will adopt it now that his cheap parlor trick
has been debunked.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[erik simpson]

On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 2:40:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> Keep up your love affair with this sophomoric argument. Maybe
> Steven Carlip will adopt it now that his cheap parlor trick
> has been debunked.
>
>

When did that happen? You are strutting, prancing embarrassment to yourself.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/12/19 2:38 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 1:00:03 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/12/19 9:13 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
>>> On 7/12/2019 11:33 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>> On 7/10/19 6:29 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>>> On 7/10/19 9:05 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
>>>>>> [snip fine-tuning argument, already rebutted by Steve Carlip]
>
> In your ignorant opinion. But you live in a fool's paradise
> where you can remain blissfully ignorant of why what I wrote
> here shows that Carlip's "rebuttal" is a mathematical parlor trick
> with no relevance to physics or to fine-tuning arguments:
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/0u86tt9vTgs/vLrtiOoGAwAJ
> Subject: Re: The Ratio 1 (one) part to 10^120 parts Means Design?
> Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2019 10:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
> Message-ID: <5bf3d640-46d0-4b3b...@googlegroups.com>
>
>
>>>>>
>>>>> A quick question for you, Ron: What is the probability (best
>>>>> estimate) of intelligent life existing in the universe?
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyone who understands probability can give an answer accurate to at
>>>>> least two significant figures, supported by easily obtainable
>>>>> objective evidence.  Can you?  More important, can you explain how
>>>>> the figure is arrived at?

>>> Does human intelligence count?
>
> This question sailed right over your polemic-primed head.

Its answer, as so much more, went over yours.

And we know that the answer to that question, as regards to *this*
universe, is one. Even smart-alecky high school students make valid
points. (I might add that they also generally do so with better
politeness than you do.)

If you want to make new universes, or to talk about universes whose
contents you have not explored yet, then you get to use all those
fine-tuning probability arguments (not that they are anything more than
wild guesses in such context). But for this universe, the case is
closed, and unless you can build a time machine and destroy life before
it originated, it stays closed.

> That is a question that you may not even have the aptitude to
> understand. That is why you falsely state the issues like this
> to R. Dean:
>
>> The probability of the universe being able to support life is a question
>> you cannot ask and expect an accurate answer, because there is a hidden
>> assumption in the question. Really, you are asking for the probability
>> that the universe can support life,
>
> You are parasitizing a sophomoric argument of which Paul Gans
> was tremendously proud, by adding the following:
>
>> given that there is already life
>> here to ask the question. And the answer to that, although well known,
>> tells you nothing you didn't already know.
>
> Keep up your love affair with this sophomoric argument. Maybe
> Steven Carlip will adopt it now that his cheap parlor trick
> has been debunked.

Your understanding of probability theory is truly abysmal. It is
perhaps even worse than your understanding of the math Carlip used.

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 14:38:37 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyik...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 1:00:03 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/12/19 9:13 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
>> > On 7/12/2019 11:33 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> >> On 7/10/19 6:29 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> >>> On 7/10/19 9:05 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
>> >>>> [snip fine-tuning argument, already rebutted by Steve Carlip]
>
>In your ignorant opinion. But you live in a fool's paradise
>where you can remain blissfully ignorant of why what I wrote
>here shows that Carlip's "rebuttal" is a mathematical parlor trick
>with no relevance to physics or to fine-tuning arguments:
>
>https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/0u86tt9vTgs/vLrtiOoGAwAJ
>Subject: Re: The Ratio 1 (one) part to 10^120 parts Means Design?
>Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2019 10:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
>Message-ID: <5bf3d640-46d0-4b3b...@googlegroups.com>
>
>
>> >>>
>> >>> A quick question for you, Ron: What is the probability (best
>> >>> estimate) of intelligent life existing in the universe?
>> >>>
>> >>> Anyone who understands probability can give an answer accurate to at
>> >>> least two significant figures, supported by easily obtainable
>> >>> objective evidence.  Can you?  More important, can you explain how
>> >>> the figure is arrived at?
>> > >
>> > Does human intelligence count?
>
>This question sailed right over your polemic-primed head.

Of course, Dean's question is rhetorical snark. Only you would
consider it meaningful.

>> >> Still awaiting an answer, Mr. Dean.
>> > >
>> > Of course, several scientist have subscribed to the multiverse
>> > hypothesis. I believe they have chosen this as a way out from
>> > actually contemplating the very possibility that the universe
>> > was designed for life. So, I would say the possibility of a
>> > designer is the inverse of the reality of this multiverse.
>
>This is quite a good answer from R. Dean, and your response
>indicates that you have no aptitude for understanding his answer.

The most charitable assumption here is that you have no idea what
you're talking about and are proud of it.

>> > "If you don't want God, you had better have a multiverse" - Bernard Carr
>> >
>> > This, it seem are the two(2) most logical options.
>
>Yup.
>
>> >> This is not an idle challenge. 
>
>Yes, it is, coming from you.
>
>
>> >>The answer forms the very basis for
>> >> the Anthropic Principle. 
>
>That's like DR. Dr. Kleinman saying that two papers of his in _Statistics in Medicine_
>form the very basis of evolutionary theory.
>
>> >> Someone talking about the principle might
>> >> want to show that he has some understanding of it.
>>
>> You didn't answer the question, but what you said indicates that you
>> don't know it.
>
>Au contraire, his question of whether human intelligence
>counts is almost a sure-fire proof that he knew what
>silly game you were playing.

Do you really think Dean was supposed to answer his own question? Or
are you just pretending that you don't understand Isaak refers to his
own question, not Dean's? The world wonders.

>> The probability of intelligent life existing in this universe is exactly
>> one.
>
>As every smart-alecky high school student knows: if something is true NOW,
>it has a probability of one.

IIUC that is exactly Isaak's point. Since you think "every" body
knows this, why did you have to answer for Dean?

>On the other hand, if it was false at some point in time, then you
>have to ask: is the probability 0 (zero) for it going to be true forever?
>
>That is where REAL probability starts, and THIS is why the anthropic
>principle naturally segues into the question: what is the probability
>of a universe having the right values for various constants (especially
>the six of Rees) being favorable for the beginning of life AND for
>its evolving into intelligent life?
>
>That is a question that you may not even have the aptitude to
>understand. That is why you falsely state the issues like this
>to R. Dean:
>
>
>> The probability of the universe being able to support life is a question
>> you cannot ask and expect an accurate answer, because there is a hidden
>> assumption in the question. Really, you are asking for the probability
>> that the universe can support life,
>
>You are parasitizing a sophomoric argument of which Paul Gans
>was tremendously proud, by adding the following:
>
>
>> given that there is already life
>> here to ask the question. And the answer to that, although well known,
>> tells you nothing you didn't already know.
>
>Keep up your love affair with this sophomoric argument. Maybe
>Steven Carlip will adopt it now that his cheap parlor trick
>has been debunked.

Your comment above sounds like something drdr polypolymath would post.
Said "debunked" event appears nowhere but in your imagination, just
like his mathematical proofs against Evolution.

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
>U. of So. Carolina in Columbia
>http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

Perhaps your employers might reconsider your position in the math
department if they read the above.

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 12:22:45 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos

<nyik...@gmail.com> continues to ejaculate his repetitive irrelevant
spew from his puckered sphincter:

>On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 10:55:02 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote
>a personal attack on me by rewriting the attribution line
>to me in her usual Peter Pan Syndrome way:

Since you don't like that I warn in the attribution line others of
your repetitive irrelevant spew, then stop posting your repetitive
irrelevant spew. Not sure how even you *still* can't figure that out.

>> On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 06:50:31 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyik...@gmail.com> continues to ejaculate his repetitive irrelevant
>> spew from his puckered sphincter:
>
>Translation: I am continuing to make personal attacks.

Your personal attacks disqualify you from complaining about my alleged
personal attacks. Tu quoque back atcha, asshole.

>And they are eminently justifiable, unlike yours.

If so, one can only wonder why you have never done so.

<snip your remaining repetitive irrelevant spew>

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 23:05:27 +0200, Steven Carlip
<car...@physics.ucdavis.edu> wrote:

>On 7/11/19 5:47 PM, jillery wrote:
>
>[...]
>> Reese makes another claim which sounds contradictory, that if the
>> value for cosmic expansion (lambda) was just a tiny bit different,
>> galaxies and stars and planets could not have formed.
>
>If "a tiny bit different" means "larger by a factor of about 100
>or more," then this is roughly correct. It's correct if you imagine
>that Lambda is larger and nothing else changes. If you also allow
>some other parameters to change (the amplitude of primordial
>density fluctuations and the baryon-to-photon ratio), it can be
>larger by about a factor of 10^24. If it's smaller (but still
>positive), there's no restriction. See Adams, "The Degree of
>Fine-Tuning in our Universe – and Others," Phys. Rept. 807 (2019)
>1-111, https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.03928, which gives a fairly
>comprehensive survey.

I understand. This is part of the problem with IDists' obsession over
the very small value of the cosmological constant. Even a factor of
100 changes it from 10^-120 to 10^-118, both of which can be
reasonably called very small values. Which is why you pointing out
the logical equivalence of the log value moots their PRATT.

>> My understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to
>> the volume of spacetime and dark energy. If that is so, the value
>> of lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the
>> early universe.
>
>That depends on how large it was. Dark energy causes accelerated
>expansion; if its density is too high, it can cause expansion that's
>fast enough to prevent the formation of stars and galaxies. (Of
>course, as I've said elsewhere, "too high" is a tricky concept.
>Unless we know what determines Lambda, which we definitely don't,
>we don't know what values are even possible, much less how likely
>they are.)

Ok, but as I mentioned elsethread, dark energy density is assumed to
be constant. If so, it's density would be the same in the early
universe as now.

>> Instead, my understanding is the expansion
>> immediately after Inflation was dominated by radiation pressure,
>> which is an entirely different thing from lambda and dark energy.
>
>That's true. The present amount of dark energy didn't become
>important to the expansion rate until a few billion years ago.
>But a much higher amount would have been different.

What evidence is there that dark energy density was higher in the
past?

What evidence is there that dark energy density was the same in the
past?

[Ron Dean]

I don't see how. You are saying that if the anti-gravity force were
far greater this would be fine. But after 13.7 billion years the
universe should be dark, unless gravity had compensated equally.
But if this had happened there are other fine tuned constants that would
have been affected: such as the formation of stars. the triple alpha
complex would there even be a periodic table?

in fact,
> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
>
> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>
> Steve Carlip
>

[Ron Dean]

I asked the question: does human intelligence count? I assumed you
meant except human intelligence.

That is the case whether the universe is designed, occurred
> naturally, or appeared last Tuesday as the result of a young god's
> failed science fair project.  The probability of *any* event having
> occurred is one after it has occurred.
>
> The probability of the universe being able to support life is a question
> you cannot ask and expect an accurate answer, because there is a hidden
> assumption in the question.  Really, you are asking for the probability
> that the universe can support life, given that there is already life
> here to ask the question.  And the answer to that, although well known,
> tells you nothing you didn't already know.
>

[Peter Nyikos]

Instead of supporting this claim, you launch into a conditional
foray into speculation of what SOME conceivable universes
are like, particularly our own. And so you abandon the quest
for showing how wrong-headed the arguments of Rees and Davies
are, the way they take fine-tuning very seriously instead of
dismissing it the way you do.

> It is, in fact, a sensible choice. If the cosmological
> constant is generated by nonperturbative effects in quantum field
> theory,

IF. And are you willing to go out on a limb and claim that
this is what must happen in any conceivable universe?

No, of course not. You admit as much below. In two successive big
backpedals.

> it is in fact going to be an exponential of a quantity
> involving the coupling constant. See, for example, Holland and
> Hollands, Class.Quant.Grav. 31 (2014) 125006, online at
> https://arxiv.org/abs/1305.5191.

What a shame Einstein didn't think highly of quantum field theory!
He might have stuck it out and insisted that tests be done to
see whether the rate of acceleration of the universe is increasing.
That would have led to another titanic feather for his cap, to
rank right up there with special and (especially) relativity.

But hindsight is 20-20, and now even you can see that Einstein
missed out on a golden opportunity. Even I, with your help.

> > That is because the logarithm of zero is undefined. It isn't even infinity:
> > the logarithm function in the extended complex plane has an essential
> > singularity at infinity.
> > In other words, every physical universe of the multiverse MUST have
> > some dark energy, no matter how little.
>
> Right.

Instead of showing this, you indulge in a monumental backpedal:

> For some mechanisms of generating a cosmological constant,
> that's correct.

Very telling, this huge backpedal of yours. And you don't even
say how likely these "some" mechanisms are *a* *priori*.

Why don't you tell us that it is generally believed by cosmologists
for one of these mechanisms to be responsible for the value of lambda being
what it is? Could it be that you aren't sure of even this much?

> > Or, to put it another way, you are assuming that Einstein wasted a
> > good part of his life by deciding that he had made the biggest mistake
> > of his life in assuming that there was a cosmological constant.
>
> It's doubtful that he ever said that.

Ah, another factoid bites the dust! Did he say anything remotely
like it?

> He certainly didn't "waste a
> good part of his life" on it.

You seem to be misreading what I wrote: the waste of time came from
him not sticking to his guns and getting a huge feather for his
cap that I talked about this time around.

> In any case, it seems very likely that
> the universe does, in fact, have a cosmological constant,

The issue is not just our universe; much more, it is about
how special our universe it is to have a cosmological constant
that is compatible with the evolution of intelligent life.

> so whether
> Einstein thought it was a mistake or not a century ago doesn't really
> matter.
>
> > If he had had your "insight" into dark energy, he would
> > have stuck to his guns, and campaigned to the end of his life for
> > his original hypothesis of a cosmological constant.
>
> Nonperturbative methods in quantum field theory weren't formulated
> until well after Einstein's death.

This is your second big backpedal. Unless you now claim that
quantum field theory must include nonperturbative methods in
any universe where some form of quantum field theory governs
the behavior of matter.

> >>>>>  Then the "anthropic" claim is that for
> >>>>> life to exist, -log(L) can be anywhere from 118 to infinity.
>
> > Or undefined and undefinable, as all physicists tacitly assumed
> > until dark energy reared its <cough> logically inevitable <cough> head.
>
> Try paying attention.

After those two big backpedals, you needn't have
alerted me in this condescending way -- you would have had my
rapt attention anyway.

> I'm not saying it's logically inevitable.

Thanks for indirectly admitting that your negative logarithm trick
did not cover a major possibility.

> I'm saying that since we don't know the physical cause of dark energy, we
> don't know whether it's logically inevitable.

Believe it or not, I said everything up there without having read
this far until now.

I think it is a no-brainer: with all the garbage universes
envisioned by Rees, there is no logical reason at all why it should
exist in most universes.

Can you even be confident that it exists in the majority of the
10^500 universes envisioned by Hawking and Mlodinow on the basis of
Feynman's theories?


Below my virtual .sig, you are returning to philosophy-of-mathematics and
philosophy-of-science themes that I told you I would like to defer
until you reply to the concrete questions I asked about lambda.

Now you have answered them, but I will have to mull over the answers
before addressing these themes. Since I've planned to start my posting break
for the weekend at 10pm, and it is now 9:50, I'll tackle them on Monday.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

U. of So. Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 20:02:05 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>
wrote:

Reread Carlip's example. 10^-118 = L is mathematically equivalent to
-log(L) = 118. In both cases, 118 is the exponent, which specifies
how many zeros go to the right of the decimal. When you increase a
positive exponent of a negative log, the number itself gets *smaller*.

AIUI Carlip's point is, the allowable range of L looks tiny because of
the standard way it's written. The difference between 10^-120 and
10^-118 is tiny in absolute terms, but that's a change of 100 times,
which is a large percentage. It's the percentage change, not the
absolute difference, which is relevant to this discussion.

Carlip affirmed that lambda is assumed to be a fixed constant per
volume of spacetime. The amount of spacetime in the early universe
was less than it is now. Which means that the effect of dark energy
was *less*, and the effect of gravity was *greater*, than it is now.

Once Inflation ended, and the Universe expanded and cooled enough to
allow energy to condense into matter, gravity began to slow down the
expansion. But as spacetime expanded, the effects of gravity
decreased and the effects of dark energy increased. At about 5-6
billion years old, dark energy overcame the slowing effects of
gravity, and the expansion of spacetime began to accelerate. All this
is supported by evidence from the Cosmic Microwave Background, and
observations of specific types of supernovae at varying distances.

>>in fact,
>> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
>> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
>>
>> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
>> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>>
>> Steve Carlip
>>

[Steven Carlip]

On 7/13/19 1:17 AM, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 23:05:27 +0200, Steven Carlip
> <car...@physics.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>
>> On 7/11/19 5:47 PM, jillery wrote:
[...]

>>> My understanding is contrary, that lambda is assumed to be tied to
>>> the volume of spacetime and dark energy. If that is so, the value
>>> of lambda could not have had much effect one way or the other in the
>>> early universe.

>> That depends on how large it was. Dark energy causes accelerated
>> expansion; if its density is too high, it can cause expansion that's
>> fast enough to prevent the formation of stars and galaxies. (Of
>> course, as I've said elsewhere, "too high" is a tricky concept.
>> Unless we know what determines Lambda, which we definitely don't,
>> we don't know what values are even possible, much less how likely
>> they are.)

> Ok, but as I mentioned elsethread, dark energy density is assumed to
> be constant. If so, it's density would be the same in the early
> universe as now.

Sure, but the usual question is a hypothetical -- what if the overall
density were much higher than it actually is? (The premise is not
that it has changed in time, but that it was always higher.)

Steve Carlip

[Mark Isaak]

My apologies, then. This whole discussion has been about the life we
are familiar with, which of course includes humans. I did not expect an
interpretation so far out of left field.

[Glenn]

Left field?

If a rolled dice lands on five, is the probability of the dice roll landing on the number five "exactly one"?

[jillery]

On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 05:36:16 +0200, Steven Carlip

Ok, I got sidetracked over understanding the current hypothesis. To
go back to Dean's argument, the expressed argument from his video is,
the value for Lambda is so finely tuned, it could not vary by much
either way. If too large, the early universe would have accelerated
apart the atoms, or even the subatomic particles, and no stars would
have formed. If too small, the early universe would have recollapsed
back on itself before atoms, or even subatomic particles, would have
formed, and so again no stars. Or perhaps the early universe would
have recollapsed at some later stage, before life evolved.

One criticism of the above is the same as I wrote before; Lambda, or
the repulsive force of spacetime, could not have been a factor in the
formation of the early universe, because at that time there was not
that much spacetime. If Lambda was so large that it overcame the
gravity of a matter-dominated early universe, that case would render
meaningless the very concept of fine-tuning that is the basis for the
hypothetical. IIUC if there was some finely-tuned value which
regulated the expansion of the early universe, it was not Lambda.

With that bit of confusion resolved, perhaps there was some *other*
finely-tuned factor, or combination of factors, which controlled the
rate of expansion of the early universe. Perhaps Inflation might have
ended some Planck time ticks sooner or later than it did. Perhaps the
radiation-dominated early universe was hotter or cooler than it was.
Perhaps the Higgs field was stronger or weaker than it was, making
mater more massive. Perhaps whatever matter/anti-matter asymmetry was
more or less than it was, changing the amount of matter. In all these
cases, the initial expansion of the early universe would be different
than it was. Whether it would be so different that the universe would
fail to develop more or less as it did, is beyond my paygrade. But my
impression is, for any changes which maintain the concept of fine
tuning, the overall sweep of the universe's evolution would still be
the same, with variations in timing only.

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 22:14:02 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

Since you asked, your question is poorly phrased, and so not easily
answered. IIUC Isaak's point is the difference between past and
future. Probabilities apply only to future events. For all events
which have already happened, the probability *that they happened* is a
certainty, ie exactly one.

So your question would be more correct if the second clause is "is the
probability that the dice roll landed on the number five "exactly
one"? Then the answer would be "yes".

I suppose one could argue there is some uncertainty to what we
observe, but that would be an entirely different question.

You're welcome.

[Glenn]

No, you're in left field.

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 22:14:02 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Glenn
<GlennS...@msn.com>:

After the fact (the roll), of course it is. And after the
fact of intelligent life arising in this universe (which it
has, snarky comments about human intelligence aside) its
probability is also "exactly one".

The probability of *anything* happening which has already
happened is "exactly one"; that's what it means.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Ron Dean]

Obviously! But since this value represents the anti-gravity force, by
adding zeros to the right, the value changes. But assuming gravity does
not change, then gravity should overwhelm. This is according to Susskind
and Stephen Weinberg.

>
> AIUI Carlip's point is, the allowable range of L looks tiny because of
> the standard way it's written. The difference between 10^-120 and
> 10^-118 is tiny in absolute terms, but that's a change of 100 times,
> which is a large percentage. It's the percentage change, not the
> absolute difference, which is relevant to this discussion.
>
> Carlip affirmed that lambda is assumed to be a fixed constant per
> volume of spacetime. The amount of spacetime in the early universe
> was less than it is now. Which means that the effect of dark energy
> was *less*, and the effect of gravity was *greater*, than it is now.
>

If dark energy has increased, where did the increase of this energy come
from?

>
> Once Inflation ended, and the Universe expanded and cooled enough to
> allow energy to condense into matter, gravity began to slow down the
> expansion.
>

I agree, prior to matter, the universe was light elements and sub-atomic
particles.

But as spacetime expanded, the effects of gravity
> decreased and the effects of dark energy increased. At about 5-6
> billion years old, dark energy overcame the slowing effects of
> gravity, and the expansion of spacetime began to accelerate. All this
> is supported by evidence from the Cosmic Microwave Background, and
> observations of specific types of supernovae at varying distances.
>

Yes, I agree, except I question that that dark energy increased, its
effect increased because of the increasing distance between galaxies.
IF this is wrong please explain why. I cannot understand where the new
energy came from.

>
>>> in fact,
>>> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
>>> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
>

This contridicts both Leonard Susskind and Stephen Weinberg.

>>>
>>> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
>>> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>>>
>>> Steve Carlip
>>>
>
>

[Glenn]

Do you think that left and right field designation should be reversed, since lefties would intuitively seem to tend toward hitting more balls in the direction of right field?

[jillery]

On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 14:31:57 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>

If it's "obviously", then why do you say Carlip said "if the
anti-gravity force were far greater" when he said the very opposite?

> But since this value represents the anti-gravity force, by
>adding zeros to the right, the value changes.

Yes, it changes, by getting even *smaller*.

>But assuming gravity does
>not change, then gravity should overwhelm. This is according to Susskind
>and Stephen Weinberg.

Overwhelm what? The expansion of space? If so, that was driven first
by Inflation, and then by radiation pressure. Dark energy had almost
no effect in the early universe.

>> AIUI Carlip's point is, the allowable range of L looks tiny because of
>> the standard way it's written. The difference between 10^-120 and
>> 10^-118 is tiny in absolute terms, but that's a change of 100 times,
>> which is a large percentage. It's the percentage change, not the
>> absolute difference, which is relevant to this discussion.
>>
>> Carlip affirmed that lambda is assumed to be a fixed constant per
>> volume of spacetime. The amount of spacetime in the early universe
>> was less than it is now. Which means that the effect of dark energy
>> was *less*, and the effect of gravity was *greater*, than it is now.
> >
>If dark energy has increased, where did the increase of this energy come
>from?

As spacetime between objects increases, so does the repulsive force of
spacetime, and similarly the attractive force of gravity decreases.

>> Once Inflation ended, and the Universe expanded and cooled enough to
>> allow energy to condense into matter, gravity began to slow down the
>> expansion.
> >
>I agree, prior to matter, the universe was light elements and sub-atomic
>particles.

Light elements and sub-atomic particles *are* matter.

>> But as spacetime expanded, the effects of gravity
>> decreased and the effects of dark energy increased. At about 5-6
>> billion years old, dark energy overcame the slowing effects of
>> gravity, and the expansion of spacetime began to accelerate. All this
>> is supported by evidence from the Cosmic Microwave Background, and
>> observations of specific types of supernovae at varying distances.
>>
>Yes, I agree, except I question that that dark energy increased, its
>effect increased because of the increasing distance between galaxies.
>IF this is wrong please explain why. I cannot understand where the new
>energy came from.

You misunderstand. There is no new energy. You have no problem
accepting that when spacetime expands, the effects of gravity
decreases. That does not mean gravity lost energy. Similarly, when
spacetime expands, the effects of dark energy, or anti-gravity if you
insist, increases.

>>>> in fact,
>>>> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
>>>> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
> >
>This contridicts both Leonard Susskind and Stephen Weinberg.

I don't recall that you quoted Weinberg. But it does contradict
Susskind and Rees arguments for fine tuning. Like Hoyle, they are not
infallible, but are human and so tend to their personal prejudices.

My understanding here is, Carlip describes the current consensus among
cosmologists.

>>>> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
>>>> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>>>>
>>>> Steve Carlip
>>>>

[Ron Dean]

That's my argument, I question that there is an increase in black
energy. Where would it come from?

>
You have no problem
> accepting that when spacetime expands, the effects of gravity
> decreases.
>

I pointed this out in the above statement.

>
That does not mean gravity lost energy. Similarly, when
> spacetime expands, the effects of dark energy, or anti-gravity if you
> insist, increases.
>

We're saying the same thing. I don[t insist that dark energy increases-
quite the contrary.

>
>>>>> in fact,
>>>>> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
>>>>> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
>>>
>> This contridicts both Leonard Susskind and Stephen Weinberg.
>>
>
> I don't recall that you quoted Weinberg.
>

I did, he gave the same number value as Susskind in a discussion with

Dawkins.

But it does contradict
> Susskind and Rees arguments for fine tuning. Like Hoyle, they are not
> infallible, but are human and so tend to their personal prejudices.
>

Carlip only challenged the cosmological constant fine tuning, he said
nothing about the other 2 dozen or so constants. We all are human with
our personal biases, including Carlip. Perhaps it's because of my
thick skull, but I did not understand that if the anti-gravity _force_
(energy) was greatly changed this change would not alter the effect of
gravity.

>
> My understanding here is, Carlip describes the current consensus among
> cosmologists.
>

I believe susskind explained how or why such a consensus amoung
scientist exist.

>
>>>>> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
>>>>> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>>>>>
>>>>> Steve Carlip
>>>>>
>

[jillery]

On Sun, 14 Jul 2019 01:12:51 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>

Don't ignore this question. If you made a mistake, own up to it.

I just said there is no new energy. The total dark energy increases
as the total volume of spacetime increases, but the amount of dark
energy per unit volume remains the same.

And the standard label is "dark energy", not "black energy".

>> You have no problem
>> accepting that when spacetime expands, the effects of gravity

>> decreases. That does not mean gravity lost energy. Similarly, when

>> spacetime expands, the effects of dark energy, or anti-gravity if you
>> insist, increases.
> >
>We're saying the same thing. I don[t insist that dark energy increases-
>quite the contrary.

We are not saying the same thing at all. Recall that you started this
topic by asserting the cosmological constant is fine tuned. That
necessarily means the cosmological constant could have been different,
and was purposely set to a precise value. That is *your* argument,
one you have made several times in the past.

Now recall your own question: "I question that there is an increase

in black energy. Where would it come from?"

Once again, you have no problem accepting that gravity would increase
if the amount of matter increased. So why do you have trouble
accepting that dark energy would increase if the amount of spacetime
increased?

>>>>>> in fact,
>>>>>> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
>>>>>> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
>>>>
>>> This contridicts both Leonard Susskind and Stephen Weinberg.
> >>
>>
>> I don't recall that you quoted Weinberg.
> >
>I did, he gave the same number value as Susskind in a discussion with
>Dawkins.

I don't recall you citing anything with Dawkins or Weinberg.

>> But it does contradict
>> Susskind and Rees arguments for fine tuning. Like Hoyle, they are not
>> infallible, but are human and so tend to their personal prejudices.
> >
>Carlip only challenged the cosmological constant fine tuning, he said
>nothing about the other 2 dozen or so constants.

Neither did you, so why should Carlip? More significantly, your
argument for a finely tuned cosmological constant was based on all
those zeros after the decimal point. That is not a characteristic of
other physical constants. So if you wanted to argue fine tuning for
them, you would have to use a different line of reasoning.

>We all are human with our personal biases, including Carlip.

The consensus of cosmologists is not based on Carlip's personal
biases.

>Perhaps it's because of my
>thick skull, but I did not understand that if the anti-gravity _force_
>(energy) was greatly changed this change would not alter the effect of
>gravity.

Dark energy and gravity are separate forces with different causes.

>> My understanding here is, Carlip describes the current consensus among
>> cosmologists.
>>
>I believe susskind explained how or why such a consensus amoung
>scientist exist.

Again you fail to quote or cite a time-stamp from the video. Why is
that?

>>>>>> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
>>>>>> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Steve Carlip
>>>>>>

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 11:45:33 -0700 (PDT), the following

>Do you think that left and right field designation should be reversed, since lefties would intuitively seem to tend toward hitting more balls in the direction of right field?

Is that the best you can do for "You are correct", an
inappropriate recasting of my "Yeah, and how 'bout them
Mets" (inappropriate because my response was *not*
irrelevant to your ignorant question)?

[Ron Dean]

That was a second part to a two part issue. Carlip had commented
that -log L could anywhere between 118 to infinity. Infinity is far less.
I questioned this, saying the universe would collapse back on itself.
Carlip responded by "no".
Then, I stated the opposite. If the anti gravity force were far
greater..... So according to what it seemed to me Carlip was
disallowing either an decrease nor an increase in the anti-gravity
force. Which was confusing. I wonder if this was not his intention.

I'm sorry, I "misspoke". But we've been saying the same thing
regarding the incapacity of dark energy to increase.

>
>
>
>>> You have no problem
>>> accepting that when spacetime expands, the effects of gravity
>>> decreases. That does not mean gravity lost energy. Similarly, when
>>> spacetime expands, the effects of dark energy, or anti-gravity if you
>>> insist, increases.
>>>
>> We're saying the same thing. I don[t insist that dark energy increases-
>> quite the contrary.
>
>
> We are not saying the same thing at all. Recall that you started this
> topic by asserting the cosmological constant is fine tuned.
>

You're playing games! This was about dark energy. I believe the
cosmological constant is "fine tuned". Susskind seems to think
so also. But Susskind took refuge in the multiverse, as did
Dawkins.

That
> necessarily means the cosmological constant could have been different,
> and was purposely set to a precise value. That is *your* argument,
> one you have made several times in the past.
>
> Now recall your own question: "I question that there is an increase
> in black energy. Where would it come from?"
>
> Once again, you have no problem accepting that gravity would increase
> if the amount of matter increased. So why do you have trouble
> accepting that dark energy would increase if the amount of spacetime
> increased?
>

Already answered. Energy must come from some wnere.

>
>
>>>>>>> in fact,
>>>>>>> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
>>>>>>> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
>>>>>
>>>> This contridicts both Leonard Susskind and Stephen Weinberg.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I don't recall that you quoted Weinberg.
>>>
>> I did, he gave the same number value as Susskind in a discussion with
>> Dawkins.
>
>
> I don't recall you citing anything with Dawkins or Weinberg.
> >
>>> But it does contradict
>>> Susskind and Rees arguments for fine tuning. Like Hoyle, they are not
>>> infallible, but are human and so tend to their personal prejudices.
>>>
>> Carlip only challenged the cosmological constant fine tuning, he said
>> nothing about the other 2 dozen or so constants.
>
>
> Neither did you, so why should Carlip? More significantly, your
> argument for a finely tuned cosmological constant was based on all
> those zeros after the decimal point. That is not a characteristic of
> other physical constants. So if you wanted to argue fine tuning for
> them, you would have to use a different line of reasoning.
>
>
>> We all are human with our personal biases, including Carlip.
>
>
> The consensus of cosmologists is not based on Carlip's personal
> biases.
>

I wasn't talking about the consensus. But from experience I know
that most scientist are either atheist or agnostic. So why should
anyone expect the consensus to be different.

>
>> Perhaps it's because of my
>> thick skull, but I did not understand that if the anti-gravity _force_
>> (energy) was greatly changed this change would not alter the effect of
>> gravity.
>
>
> Dark energy and gravity are separate forces with different causes.
>

Yes, This I do understand.

>
>>> My understanding here is, Carlip describes the current consensus among
>>> cosmologists.
>>>
>> I believe susskind explained how or why such a consensus amoung
>> scientist exist.
>
>
> Again you fail to quote or cite a time-stamp from the video. Why is
> that?
>

I gave the reference for Susskind's post earlier. Somehow it got snipped
.. Due to my laziness I don't look it up over and over.

>
>>>>>>> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
>>>>>>> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Steve Carlip
>>>>>>>
>

[Glenn]

I have no clue as to what you might think that blabber means, but my response was not equivalent in any way to saying you are correct.

Probability, as most people know, is a measure of the likelihood of an event that hasn't happened yet. It's a "will happen", not a "has happened" measure.
You seem to have assumed Mark's claim was appropriate, and recast it into an even more bizarre statement. This is no surprise, since you have been making and supporting such silly claims for years.

Now do your worst; "refute" me.

[jillery]

On Sun, 14 Jul 2019 15:36:50 -0400, Ron Dean <"Ron Dean"@gmail.net>

Infinity is far less than what? Your comments are ambiguous.

>I questioned this, saying the universe would collapse back on itself.
>Carlip responded by "no".

And Carlip's response is correct. And I explained why, because dark
energy had no significant impact on the expansion of the early
universe. Once again, the initial expansion was driven by Inflation
and radiation pressure.

>Then, I stated the opposite. If the anti gravity force were far
>greater.....

That's not what you said. You said *Carlip* said the anti-gravity
force would be greater. It's still preserved in the quoted text
above. And I explained what he actually said and why he said it.

>So according to what it seemed to me Carlip was
>disallowing either an decrease nor an increase in the anti-gravity
>force. Which was confusing. I wonder if this was not his intention.

My impression is, what you describe above is nothing like his
intention. My impression is, his intention was to show that your
claim is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of both the current
cosmological consensus and of what Susskind and Rees said in your
cited video.

But if you really doubt Carlip's motives, then what's the point of you
asking him anything?

It doesn't matter to me, but your use of nonstandard labels suggests
you're talking about something different. Don't you want to be
understood?

>>>> You have no problem
>>>> accepting that when spacetime expands, the effects of gravity
>>>> decreases. That does not mean gravity lost energy. Similarly, when
>>>> spacetime expands, the effects of dark energy, or anti-gravity if you
>>>> insist, increases.
>>>>
>>> We're saying the same thing. I don[t insist that dark energy increases-
>>> quite the contrary.
>>
>>
>> We are not saying the same thing at all. Recall that you started this
>> topic by asserting the cosmological constant is fine tuned.
> >
>You're playing games!

You're assuming my intent! If you really think I'm playing games,
then what's the point of either of us continuing this discussion?

>This was about dark energy.

Apparently you don't understand the relation between dark energy,
Lambda, and the cosmological constant. My understanding is Susskind
and Rees described these labels as referring to essentially the same
thing.

> I believe the
>cosmological constant is "fine tuned". Susskind seems to think
>so also. But Susskind took refuge in the multiverse, as did
>Dawkins.
>
>> That
>> necessarily means the cosmological constant could have been different,
>> and was purposely set to a precise value. That is *your* argument,
>> one you have made several times in the past.
>>
>> Now recall your own question: "I question that there is an increase
>> in black energy. Where would it come from?"
>>
>> Once again, you have no problem accepting that gravity would increase
>> if the amount of matter increased. So why do you have trouble
>> accepting that dark energy would increase if the amount of spacetime
>> increased?
> >
>Already answered.

Nope.

>Energy must come from some wnere.

From where does the energy for gravitational attraction come, but
matter?

From where does the energy for gravitational repulsion come, but
spacetime itself?

What's the difference?

>>>>>>>> in fact,
>>>>>>>> there are pretty good arguments that a number greater than the value
>>>>>>>> in our universe would lead to a universe with more room for life.
>>>>>>
>>>>> This contridicts both Leonard Susskind and Stephen Weinberg.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I don't recall that you quoted Weinberg.
>>>>
>>> I did, he gave the same number value as Susskind in a discussion with
>>> Dawkins.
>>
>>
>> I don't recall you citing anything with Dawkins or Weinberg.

A cite and a time-stamp would have been useful here.

>>>> But it does contradict
>>>> Susskind and Rees arguments for fine tuning. Like Hoyle, they are not
>>>> infallible, but are human and so tend to their personal prejudices.
>>>>
>>> Carlip only challenged the cosmological constant fine tuning, he said
>>> nothing about the other 2 dozen or so constants.
>>
>>
>> Neither did you, so why should Carlip? More significantly, your
>> argument for a finely tuned cosmological constant was based on all
>> those zeros after the decimal point. That is not a characteristic of
>> other physical constants. So if you wanted to argue fine tuning for
>> them, you would have to use a different line of reasoning.

Does your silence here mean that you withdraw your complaint above?

>>> We all are human with our personal biases, including Carlip.
>>
>>
>> The consensus of cosmologists is not based on Carlip's personal
>> biases.
>>
>I wasn't talking about the consensus.

I was.

>But from experience I know
>that most scientist are either atheist or agnostic. So why should
>anyone expect the consensus to be different.

You have made this complaint many times in the past. If you doubt
scientists' motives as a group, then what's the point of you asking
them questions?

>>> Perhaps it's because of my
>>> thick skull, but I did not understand that if the anti-gravity _force_
>>> (energy) was greatly changed this change would not alter the effect of
>>> gravity.
>>
>>
>> Dark energy and gravity are separate forces with different causes.
>>
>Yes, This I do understand.
>>
>>>> My understanding here is, Carlip describes the current consensus among
>>>> cosmologists.
>>>>
>>> I believe susskind explained how or why such a consensus amoung
>>> scientist exist.
>>
>>
>> Again you fail to quote or cite a time-stamp from the video. Why is
>> that?
>>
> I gave the reference for Susskind's post earlier. Somehow it got snipped
>.. Due to my laziness I don't look it up over and over.

Your failure to cite your sources is due to something more than mere
laziness. My impression is, you dislike affirming your assumptions
and recollections.

Steve Carlip snipped your OP cites from this thread. My impression is
he did so because they had nothing to do with the issues he wanted to
discuss. Since you won't, I copy them here for your convenience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4T2Ulv48nw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILwxUXbg_8

To the best of my knowledge, the above are the only two videos you
cited in this topic. If there were others, then cite them here.

Although the two videos have much overlap, there are some differences.
Nevertheless, the speakers who discuss the cosmological constant are
Susskind and Rees. When the topic moves to multiverse, other speakers
like Brian Greene and Max Tegmark talk about that. To the best of my
knowledge, neither Weinberg nor Dawkins show up in these videos. In
fact, Dawkins would be a duck out of water in them, as he's a
biologist.

More to the point, you had previously misunderstood what Susskind and
Rees said, and I challenged you then to quote where they said as you
described. You didn't back up what you said then, and you haven't
backed up what you say above. Why is that?

>>>>>>>> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
>>>>>>>> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Steve Carlip
>>>>>>>>

[Bill Rogers]

On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 12:10:03 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
> According to Professor Leonard Susskind the term
> cosmological constant invented by Einstein which is
> like an anti-gravity force has a very tiny value - of
> ..0000000...(120) zeros..001.or 2, but this force also
> called black energy is the cause of the increasing
> expansion of our universe. Had this energy been even
> slightly different the universe would have expanded
> too fast or too slow for stars and galaxies to form
> consequently, there could have been no heavy elements
> and no life.
> According to Dr Susskind, the value of this constant
> could not vary more than 1 (one) part in 10 ^120 parts.
> >
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4T2Ulv48nw
> >
> However, Dr susskind turns to the multiverse.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILwxUXbg_8
>
> Who is Dr Leonard Susskind?
>
> Leonard Susskind (/ˈsʌskɪnd/; born 1940)[2][3] is an American physicist,
> who is professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and
> founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His
> research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum
> statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology.[1] He is a member of the US
> National Academy of Sciences,[4] and the American Academy of Arts and
> Sciences,[5] an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter
> Institute for Theoretical Physics,[6] and a distinguished professor of
> the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.[7]
>
> Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.[8]
> He was the first to give a precise string-theoretic interpretation of
> the holographic principle in 1995[9] and the first to introduce the idea
> of the string theory landscape in 2003.[10][11]
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskindlein Medal[13].

>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> https://www.avast.com/antivirus

It looks to me as though you've not really understood the counterarguments that Carlip and others have offered, maybe because you think that simply having a prominent physicist like Susskind "admit" there's a fine tuning problem seems to clinch the deal for you. I'll try to restate the arguments others have already made.

Here's the thing. The argument for fine tuning goes something like this. If these fundamental constants had values only slightly different than the ones they actually have, galaxies, stars, planets, and life would all be impossible. It is highly improbable that, in the absence of a fine-tuner setting those constants to just the right values, the universe would just happen to come out the way it did. Therefore there must be an explanation, either a fine tuner, or an infinite array of universes each with different values of the constants, with life occurring in the infinitesimal fraction of those universes which have appropriate values for the various constants.

Here's the problem. You are comparing these probabilities....

1. The probability of the constants having the values that they do if there's no Fine Tuner

2. The probability of the constants having the values that they do if there is a fine tuner

And you'd sort of like to use Bayes theorem to get you to the probability that there is a Fine Tuner.

The first problem (and it's fatal to the argument) is that you have no way to calculate those probabilities. What is the probability, for example, that the cosmological constant would take on the value it actually has, in the absence of a Fine Tuner? To answer that you have to assume that the constant "is drawn" from some probability distribution that describes what it might be in the absence of Fine Tuning. The simplest probability distribution that might occur to you - a uniform distribution from negative infinity to positive infinity gives you a zero probability for finding the cosmological constant within any finite range, even a huge range, never mind a tiny one. So that won't work. You could pick a uniform distribution extending from some negative value to some positive one, but how would you justify those endpoints? Say you pick a normal distribution centered on the value we currently have - how would you justify that? How would you estimate the width of the distribution? There is simply no way to calculate the probabilities that you need in order to show that fine tuning is a problem.

Even if it were a problem, there's be no way to use the argument to get you to "the probability that there's a fine tuner." Here's why not.

By Bayes theorem you can find the probability that there's a fine tuner as follows

Probability of Fine Tuner = (Probability of observing the constants we observe) times (Probability of there being a fine tuner given we observe the constants we observe) divided by (Probability of observing the constants we observe given a Fine Tuner).

You cannot calculate any of those probabilities.

We do not have reliable intuitions about probabilities, especially about very small ones. The whole fine tuning argument rests on an intuitive feeling that our existence is amazing because there are so many more ways in which we might not have existed than the one way in which we do. But that's true even of your own personal existence - over the hundreds of generations that led up to your birth a mind boggling number of coincidences had to occur for you to be born as exactly the person you are. If you have a religious bent, that might lead you to believe that God has a special plan for your existence and organized everything for thousands (or billions) of years to make it possible. The fine tuning argument is based on a similar unreliable intuition. (Unreliable, but attractive enough that even someone like Susskind will go for it).

[Peter Nyikos]

I've understood them, and it should be obvious by now that the
negative log trick of Carlip on lambda and lambda alone,
which you thought to be devastating to all fine tuning arguments,
is an epic fail as to being a complete modeling of the possibilities of "lambda". It leaves out the possibility that there is NO cosmological
constant in some universe.

Carlip had to do an enormous backpedal, in which he admitted that
he hoped that any universe based on quantum mechanics would give a
nonzero lambda, but he couldn't even verify that it has that
effect in OUR universe.

> maybe because you think that simply having a prominent physicist like Susskind "admit" there's a fine tuning problem seems to clinch the deal for you. I'll try to restate the arguments others have already made.

But not mine. You've avoided replying to my posts, concentrating
instead on Ron Dean.

>
> Here's the thing. The argument for fine tuning goes something like this. If these fundamental constants had values only slightly different than the ones they actually have, galaxies, stars, planets, and life would all be impossible. It is highly improbable that, in the absence of a fine-tuner setting those constants to just the right values, the universe would just happen to come out the way it did.

...also in the absence of a multiverse of the kind Susskind and Reese
and other distinguished cosmologists prefer.

> Therefore there must be an explanation, either a fine tuner, or an infinite array of universes each with different values of the constants, with life occurring in the infinitesimal fraction of those universes which have appropriate values for the various constants.
>
> Here's the problem. You are comparing these probabilities....
>
> 1. The probability of the constants having the values that they do if there's no Fine Tuner
>
> 2. The probability of the constants having the values that they do if there is a fine tuner
>
> And you'd sort of like to use Bayes theorem to get you to the probability that there is a Fine Tuner.
>
> The first problem (and it's fatal to the argument) is that you have no way to calculate those probabilities.

But we can eliminate such epic fails as using negative logs
to calculate them. I'll elaborate on this in reply to Carlip,
who at least has the courtesy to reply to the post where
I introduced the epic fail.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to if Carlip and I can't get
to any reasonable agreement about it within two weeks.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of So. Carolina

http://people.math.sc.edu

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 4:35:04 PM UTC-4, Steven Carlip wrote:

This is my second and final reply to your post, Steve. Since
you haven't yet answered the first reply, I will recap its
most essential parts.

> On 7/12/19 7:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

In the referenced post of mine to which you were replying, I explained that
your attempt to model lambda by -log(|lambda|) was a failure because
it didn't allow for the possibility of lambda = 0, which is what
all leading physicists -- including, belatedly, Einstein himself --
assumed it was until recently.

You indirectly admitted as much in the post to which I am replying,
and I pointed to the exact place where you did it in my first reply
to this same post.

> > My point is that your whole argument here needs to be
> > replaced by a physically meaningful argument.
>
> Absolutely.

It's a bit late to be dancing to my tune so enthusiastically.
[That's an allusion to a fable -- parable, really -- about
a piper and some fish, attributed to Aesop.] But let that pass.

> Do you have a physically meaningful argument?

Yes, e.g., against your negative log model of lambda. Not only
does it ignore the case lambda = 0, it also means that if lambda were
so small that its total effect on the expansion of our universe were
smaller than the radius of a proton, or even any finite number
of orders of magnitude smaller, your model puts all the real numbers that
directly describe any LARGER value of lambda in some finite interval,
and all the rest of the real numbers model values of lambda even
closer to 0.

Anyone who tries to calculate probabilities for values of lambda
on that basis deserves to be summarily ignored.

> Do you
> have some deeper physical understanding of the process that generates
> Lambda, and what the resulting probability distribution is?
>
> Steve Carlip

It would be foolish to expect me to succeed where the greatest
cosmologists in the world have thus far failed "by a country mile,"
to use a homespun phrase.

On the other hand, there are any number of models that we
can safely eliminate. Another one, at the opposite extreme
from your unworkable one, is the one usually assumed implicitly
by most if not all creationists: that all intervals [a, b] of
a given length are given the same probability, which leads to
a complete breakdown of probability theory.

That's because one cannot put a probability measure on the real line
that assigns a value of 1 to the whole line and equal probabilities
to all intervals of length one (1). Probability measures are countably
additive, and any nonzero assignment of probability to falling in,
say, [-1, 1], leads to a finite interval having probability greater than 1.

It would get us too deep into the philosophy of mathematics to abandon
countable additivity, so I will talk instead of what I think might
be a physically reasonable assignment.


Despite many misuses of the normal density function ("the bell curve"),
it seems as good as any at this point. The obvious one for lambda
would be centered on zero. The big question -- which ID theorists
can be expected to hotly dispute with atheists -- is where to put the standard
deviations.

I'm sure atheists would love it if the first standard deviation were put
at the observed value of lambda, 10^{-120}. But that is almost as
absurd as your negative log model. My suggestion is this: put
something like the following at three standard deviations, on
the heuristic idea that anything outside is an "outlier".

Three standard deviations could mark the spot where lambda is so
huge, that if one lets t = 1 mark the radius of the universe when
subatomic particles could begin to condense, the universe is already
so close to zero density of ordinary matter and energy by t=1.1
that even Krauss, Mlodinow, and Hawking would have hesitated to have
THAT degree of "nothing" to be something that our universe
"could and did create itself from."

I think you are better at reading the minds of this trio than I am,
but if you prefer something more physical, we might be able
to work something out together for the location of standard
deviations. I'll work hard at being disinterested, and I hope
you will too.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
Specialty: set-theoretic topology, which has a multiverse all its own.

[Ron Dean]

Far less than 118. This should have been obvious, considering it was
a reflection of Carlip's statement.

>
>
>> I questioned this, saying the universe would collapse back on itself.
>> Carlip responded by "no".
>
>
> And Carlip's response is correct. And I explained why, because dark
> energy had no significant impact on the expansion of the early
> universe. Once again, the initial expansion was driven by Inflation
> and radiation pressure.
>

It depends on how early.

>
>> Then, I stated the opposite. If the anti gravity force were far
>> greater.....
>
>
> That's not what you said. You said *Carlip* said the anti-gravity
> force would be greater. It's still preserved in the quoted text
> above. And I explained what he actually said and why he said it.
>

Maybe instead of the word he "said" it came across as implied.
HE said "no" to the lesser value. So, the opposite value seem
logical, but wrong. IOW I was challenging Carlip. He seemed to
need it both ways. That's how it seemed to me.

>
>> So according to what it seemed to me Carlip was
>> disallowing either an decrease nor an increase in the anti-gravity
>> force. Which was confusing. I wonder if this was not his intention.
>
>
> My impression is, what you describe above is nothing like his
> intention. My impression is, his intention was to show that your
> claim is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of both the current
> cosmological consensus and of what Susskind and Rees said in your
> cited video.
>

I did not misunderstand Susskind and Rees, They both believe the
universe is fine tuned for life, but both of them turn to the
multiverse as the explanation. It's pretty certain Carlip
disagrees with them.

>
> But if you really doubt Carlip's motives, then what's the point of you
> asking him anything?
>

Give me a break, When I began reading Carlip I had no reason to wonder
about his motivation. i became confused as I continued over days. I'm
not easily confused. Therefore, I wondered whether or not this was
his objective. Whether it was or not he succeeded. And it's obvious
that you're confused too!

> understood. >
OK I Apologize.

>
>>>>> You have no problem
>>>>> accepting that when spacetime expands, the effects of gravity
>>>>> decreases. That does not mean gravity lost energy. Similarly, when
>>>>> spacetime expands, the effects of dark energy, or anti-gravity if you
>>>>> insist, increases.
>>>>>
>>>> We're saying the same thing. I don[t insist that dark energy increases-
>>>> quite the contrary.
>>>
>>>
>>> We are not saying the same thing at all. Recall that you started this
>>> topic by asserting the cosmological constant is fine tuned.
>>>
>> You're playing games!
>
>
> You're assuming my intent! If you really think I'm playing games,
> then what's the point of either of us continuing this discussion?
>

We were discussing dark energy at the moment which we are in agreement.
But then from earlier, you bring back fine tuning. This is why I said
you are playing games. I realize we disagree regarding fine tuning.

>
>> This was about dark energy.
>
>
> Apparently you don't understand the relation between dark energy,
> Lambda, and the cosmological constant.
>

I believe I do, they are the same thing.

>
My understanding is Susskind
> and Rees described these labels as referring to essentially the same
> thing.
>

But you don't?

After discussing bubble universes in a multiverse (starting at 4:45
minutes), Dawkins (at 6:16 minutes) says, "I think it's rather an
elegant explanation".

>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5O--OSa9mg&t=318s

Weinberg is saying that the dark energy is decreasing, and that
some time in the future at the final state, this constant will be
zero and the multiverse. (starting about 26:005 min)
The entire discussion is fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5AsHJJArg&t=1170s

>>>>> But it does contradict
>>>>> Susskind and Rees arguments for fine tuning. Like Hoyle, they are not
>>>>> infallible, but are human and so tend to their personal prejudices.
>>>>>
>>>> Carlip only challenged the cosmological constant fine tuning, he said
>>>> nothing about the other 2 dozen or so constants.
>>>
>>>
>>> Neither did you, so why should Carlip? More significantly, your
>>> argument for a finely tuned cosmological constant was based on all
>>> those zeros after the decimal point. That is not a characteristic of
>>> other physical constants. So if you wanted to argue fine tuning for
>>> them, you would have to use a different line of reasoning.
>
>
> Does your silence here mean that you withdraw your complaint above?
>

But the couple dozen other constants can vary only about 1 or 2%.
Any one varying more, would result in a failed universe or a sterile
universe.

>
>>>> We all are human with our personal biases, including Carlip.
>>>
>>>
>>> The consensus of cosmologists is not based on Carlip's personal
>>> biases.
>>>
>> I wasn't talking about the consensus.
>
>
> I was.
>

We are all human with our prejudices and biases.
>
I just heard something on TV saying that the Caucasian race,
white people will be extinct by the end of this century.
And if this distresses you = you're a racist!

I don't want to see none of the 3 races extinct.

This thread is still young.

>
> Although the two videos have much overlap, there are some differences.
> Nevertheless, the speakers who discuss the cosmological constant are
> Susskind and Rees. When the topic moves to multiverse, other speakers
> like Brian Greene and Max Tegmark talk about that. To the best of my
> knowledge, neither Weinberg nor Dawkins show up in these videos. In
> fact, Dawkins would be a duck out of water in them, as he's a
> biologist.
>
> More to the point, you had previously misunderstood what Susskind and
> Rees said, and I challenged you then to quote where they said as you
> described. You didn't back up what you said then, and you haven't
> backed up what you say above. Why is that?
>

I did above

>
>>>>>>>>> The point is that whether the value in our universe seems likely or
>>>>>>>>> unlikely depends almost etirely on how you phrase the question.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Steve Carlip
>>>>>>>>>
>
>

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 7:50:03 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:

> Leonard seems to be in a pickle.
>
> "Without any explanation of nature's fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID."
>
> https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/interview-with-lenny-susskind/

Well chosen! No wonder none of the critics of fine tuning have
anything to say in rebuttal. Although it is focused on a 2005
interview with Leonard Susskind, nothing new has emerged on this
thread to counteract it.

And if Steve Carlip has you killfiled, I'll remind him of this
link once he starts to engage with me this week on this thread.
Meanwhile you can take a look at the reply I did to him this morning:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/0u86tt9vTgs/0Hrh4hvsAwAJ
Subject: Re: The Ratio 1 (one) part to 10^120 parts Means Design?
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2019 08:07:30 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <1f0c0ed7-37de-4d79...@googlegroups.com>

You can probably silence any of your critics on this thread by
referring them to the post I've linked just now.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math.
U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 14 Jul 2019 13:58:49 -0700 (PDT), the following

>I have no clue as to what you might think that blabber means, but my response was not equivalent in any way to saying you are correct.

Your first 4 words in that sentence pretty well sums it up;
you should have quit when you were behind.

>Probability, as most people know, is a measure of the likelihood of an event that hasn't happened yet. It's a "will happen", not a "has happened" measure.

The probability of an event which has happened is 1.0:

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8vfwt4/eli5_probability_of_a_past_event/
https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-on-applying-probability-to-past-events#

>You seem to have assumed Mark's claim was appropriate, and recast it into an even more bizarre statement. This is no surprise, since you have been making and supporting such silly claims for years.
>
>Now do your worst; "refute" me.

Done. HAND.

[j.nobel...@gmail.com]

On Monday, July 15, 2019 at 11:10:04 AM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 4:35:04 PM UTC-4, Steven Carlip wrote:
>
> This is my second and final reply to your post, Steve. Since
> you haven't yet answered the first reply, I will recap its
> most essential parts.
>
>
> > On 7/12/19 7:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> In the referenced post of mine to which you were replying, I explained that
> your attempt to model lambda by -log(|lambda|) was a failure because
> it didn't allow for the possibility of lambda = 0, which is what
> all leading physicists -- including, belatedly, Einstein himself --
> assumed it was until recently.
>
> You indirectly admitted as much in the post to which I am replying,
> and I pointed to the exact place where you did it in my first reply
> to this same post.

That's hardly a failure. Physics is full of things where there is a non-zero
ground state energy. And when you dig down deeper to why this more derived
aspect of physics involves non-zero ground state energies, you discover that
it could be no other way. Without asserting that this must be the case
for whatever form of equation ultimately makes sense for that which lambda
currently attempts to model, it's nothing new or remotely strange. It's closer
to what modern physicists would anticipate.

This whole fine tuning thing is really so very strange. It essentially
looks like some teenager looking at the equations of physics and treating
constants as if they were algebraic variables. Looking at them as if they
can just be arbitrarily chosen. That all they are is any old equation.

As to this red herring about what Einstein thought, it breaks down
more like this. Was there a term for something like lambda or not?
If there was no term, that says something about the physics. It doesn't
say that there was a term but it's value was zero. If the physics
requires the term, zero is likely an impossible value because of something
akin to the form being a logarithm (a non-zero ground state). Speculating
about whether or not a term is necessary, no matter how genius the physicist,
isn't really something to put much weight to. It's just a statement of
not knowing. Their genius just gives them a potentially more profound grasp
of what they don't understand. As it ever is.

So this crowing about what you sense to be some sort of victory? is
hardly victory. It looks much more like you understand far far less than
you are pretending to understand. You read a book, it dumbed things down
but you're taking it as gospel, and then complaining about those who
aren't bothering to patiently hold the hand of a petulant student to
correct their every misconception. And not just petulant buy whining
and accusing others of being responsible for their mistakes.

Settle down, lighten up, and lose the agenda. You might learn something.

[Glenn]

There was no need to apply probability to that response. I just wonder what
damage has been done to you because of this type of behavior of yours over the years.

[Glenn]

No one can silence another here (besides DIG). Individuals can silence themselves, but even lack of response doesn't necessitate the sound of crickets.

Appealing to a completely speculative thing such as an infinity of universes is so extraordinary in scale that those that use the idea to argue against the Universe existing as science does understand to be exquisitely fine-tuned to allow intelligent life, clearly has a reason beyond trying to understand why their math doesn't seem to work. And that reason is quite obvious, has been for many years, but is something Steve Carlip denies.