Hard Atheism of John Harshman Contrasted with Agnosticism of Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

This is a reply to the tail end of a post on JAMES TOUR VICTORIOUS?!
Despite the use of our two names, this OP is issue-oriented.
It is because everyone's brand of religion (or the lack of one)
is highly individual, even if the words used for it are the same,
that I use our names to orient the readers.

For "hard atheism" I use the definition I learned in alt.atheism: the
unequivocal denial of the existence of a God or gods. For "agnosticism," the best
definition of my brand is that it asserts that it is impossible to prove,
beyond a reasonable doubt, the existence or nonexistence of a Designer of our universe.
Details of these stances follow in the reply itself:

On Saturday, December 23, 2023 at 1:32:19 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 12/22/23 7:33 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:


> > PS Don't think I am devoid of Christmas spirit. I had a nice exchange with
> > your sidekick Erik Simpson, and with him I am following Hemidactylus's
> > advice to call a truce for the season. But Christmas means nothing to a
> > person like you, who think God and a life after death are fairy tales
> > that normal adults need to grow out of.

That's an extreme of hard atheism that I think YOU need to grow out of.
One can be a hard atheist and still not think that there is something wrong
with not being one.

> You don't believe in either God or a life after death, right?

"believe in" is not a term I like to use, because it can be used to denote "trust"
where God or gods is concerned, as well as "conviction of its existence."
And "trust" is not useful for talking about the main point of disagreement
between you and me. That point is illustrated by what comes next:

> Last I heard, you were 90% certain that they didn't exist.

Just plain false where a life after death is concerned. Its existence
is not logically connected with that of God or gods; only its nature is, if it does exist.


Besides, I eschew talk of "certainty" (with or without degrees) outside of pure mathematics.
The 90% refers to a subjective confidence level; I have no idea what the objective
measure of correctness is or whether there even can be one.


The number is as low as it is because I bring the Designer of our universe , if any,
in via a very different universe in a multiverse of which our ca. 14 gigayear
old universe
is a vanishingly small fraction, as would be the universe of the Designer.
I'm sure you can recall this kind of talk from me several times in the past.

Were it not for the possibility of that very different universe, the 90% would
become more like 99.99999999%. But even that is small compared to my
conviction that there IS a multiverse, as opposed to your 19th century style
conviction that our one little universe is all there is or was or can be. Carl Sagan
was very much behind the times when he made that conviction into the opening sentence
of his book, _Cosmos_.


> What in fact does
> Christmas mean to you?

Primarily, a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Secondarily, a very festive
occasion that the Scrooges and Grinches of our society would have us abandon.
My OP of the thread, "Modern Grinches," goes into this; see:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/rYVfxWoYgMY/m/8TgHMjaAAwAJ
Dec 19, 2023, 4:52:14 PM

Burkhard did a long post later in that thread on the Puritans, who were even more extreme
in their opposition to what is the secondary meaning of Christmas for me.


> Is there something wrong with being an atheist?

Absolutely not. I have gone too many miles in the moccasins of atheists,
as the saying goes, to have anything but respect for atheism. It's the excess
baggage that atheists like the you add on to it where my objections begin.


Peter Nyikos

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Wednesday, January 3, 2024 at 3:52:28 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> This is a reply to the tail end of a post on JAMES TOUR VICTORIOUS?!
> Despite the use of our two names, this OP is issue-oriented.
> It is because everyone's brand of religion (or the lack of one)
> is highly individual, even if the words used for it are the same,
> that I use our names to orient the readers.
>
> For "hard atheism" I use the definition I learned in alt.atheism: the
> unequivocal denial of the existence of a God or gods. For "agnosticism," the best
> definition of my brand is that it asserts that it is impossible to prove,
> beyond a reasonable doubt, the existence or nonexistence of a Designer of our universe.
> Details of these stances follow in the reply itself:

Your indulging in self-serving partial views.
You have a history of calling people atheists with invidious connotations of that
entailing their being immoral. You use it as character assassination, often in the
context of various poisoning the well fallacies and ad hominem fallacies.

Your cherry-picked definitions here evade you equivocal usage in the past.
Atheism is a lack of belief in god(s). As is pointed out often, the typical difference
between an atheist and a theist is that an atheist lacks belief in one additional god
compared to a theist. That is a fairer starting point.

Your weave into agnosticism is similarly not done fairly. A statement that
we can't know can easily apply to both theists and atheists. Being an atheist
isn't in any way an assertion that one knows that there is no god(s).

There is a conceptual category of people who feel certain in their belief
that specific gods don't exist other than as story characters. You almost
certainly fit within that category regards Zeus and Apollo, probably Baal
and for that matter certain people's conception of the christian god.

From what I've observed, one thing that sets you apart from many here
is that you seemingly assert that your hope that there is a god, in some ways
fitting to some incarnations partially aligned with some christian traditions,
is somehow a virtue unto itself. And for that matter, people who don't share
the same hope are seen as lacking in virtue as you paint this as a brand of
sympathy where you hope for some restitution for those who suffer in
this life. My complaint isn't that you hold such a hope, but that you repeatedly
seem to condemn those who don't find any special virtue in hoping as you
do, perhaps because they realize that hoping for things doesn't effect
any change.

Beyond that, I don't feel inclined to include your nastiness towards John.
Maybe you should have taken a longer break.

[John Harshman]

On 1/3/24 12:51 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> This is a reply to the tail end of a post on JAMES TOUR VICTORIOUS?!
> Despite the use of our two names, this OP is issue-oriented.
> It is because everyone's brand of religion (or the lack of one)
> is highly individual, even if the words used for it are the same,
> that I use our names to orient the readers.
>
> For "hard atheism" I use the definition I learned in alt.atheism: the
> unequivocal denial of the existence of a God or gods. For "agnosticism," the best
> definition of my brand is that it asserts that it is impossible to prove,
> beyond a reasonable doubt, the existence or nonexistence of a Designer of our universe.
> Details of these stances follow in the reply itself:
>
> On Saturday, December 23, 2023 at 1:32:19 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 12/22/23 7:33 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>>> PS Don't think I am devoid of Christmas spirit. I had a nice exchange with
>>> your sidekick Erik Simpson, and with him I am following Hemidactylus's
>>> advice to call a truce for the season. But Christmas means nothing to a
>>> person like you, who think God and a life after death are fairy tales
>>> that normal adults need to grow out of.
>
> That's an extreme of hard atheism that I think YOU need to grow out of.
> One can be a hard atheist and still not think that there is something wrong
> with not being one.

You're responding to yourself there, to a bit where you imagine what I
might think.

>> You don't believe in either God or a life after death, right?
>
> "believe in" is not a term I like to use, because it can be used to denote "trust"
> where God or gods is concerned, as well as "conviction of its existence."
> And "trust" is not useful for talking about the main point of disagreement
> between you and me. That point is illustrated by what comes next:

One would hope so, since that paragraph says nothing substantive.

>> Last I heard, you were 90% certain that they didn't exist.
>
> Just plain false where a life after death is concerned. Its existence
> is not logically connected with that of God or gods; only its nature is, if it does exist.

Again, you avoid taking any position. What in your view is the
probability that there is a life after death? What, in your view, is the
probability that there's a god?

> Besides, I eschew talk of "certainty" (with or without degrees) outside of pure mathematics.
> The 90% refers to a subjective confidence level; I have no idea what the objective
> measure of correctness is or whether there even can be one.

Forget the word "certainty". Substitute "probability". This quibbling
over wording avoids saying anything.

> The number is as low as it is because I bring the Designer of our universe , if any,
> in via a very different universe in a multiverse of which our ca. 14 gigayear
> old universe
> is a vanishingly small fraction, as would be the universe of the Designer.
> I'm sure you can recall this kind of talk from me several times in the past.

What number? You still haven't claimed any number. I don't think your
position has so far been coherently expressed.

> Were it not for the possibility of that very different universe, the 90% would
> become more like 99.99999999%. But even that is small compared to my
> conviction that there IS a multiverse, as opposed to your 19th century style
> conviction that our one little universe is all there is or was or can be. Carl Sagan
> was very much behind the times when he made that conviction into the opening sentence
> of his book, _Cosmos_.

I have no such conviction; again you are imagining what I might think.

>> What in fact does
>> Christmas mean to you?
>
> Primarily, a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Secondarily, a very festive
> occasion that the Scrooges and Grinches of our society would have us abandon.
> My OP of the thread, "Modern Grinches," goes into this; see:

Why do you celebrate the birth of Jesus? You would appear to put the
probability that he actually was divine at considerably less than 10%.
Is it just that he seemed like a really nice guy who had some good
advice for living?

> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/rYVfxWoYgMY/m/8TgHMjaAAwAJ
> Dec 19, 2023, 4:52:14 PM
>
> Burkhard did a long post later in that thread on the Puritans, who were even more extreme
> in their opposition to what is the secondary meaning of Christmas for me.
>
>
>> Is there something wrong with being an atheist?
>
> Absolutely not. I have gone too many miles in the moccasins of atheists,
> as the saying goes, to have anything but respect for atheism. It's the excess
> baggage that atheists like the you add on to it where my objections begin.

What is this excess baggage and how do you know that I add it?

[erik simpson]

Your conviction of am enormous multiverse arouses my curiosity. How did
you come to such a conclusion? I intend no hostility; just interest.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

This being Friday and with me having commitments for the evening,
I will be very brief in my responses.

On Wednesday, January 3, 2024 at 8:22:30 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 1/3/24 12:51 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > This is a reply to the tail end of a post on JAMES TOUR VICTORIOUS?!
> > Despite the use of our two names, this OP is issue-oriented.
> > It is because everyone's brand of religion (or the lack of one)
> > is highly individual, even if the words used for it are the same,
> > that I use our names to orient the readers.
> >
> > For "hard atheism" I use the definition I learned in alt.atheism: the
> > unequivocal denial of the existence of a God or gods. For "agnosticism," the best
> > definition of my brand is that it asserts that it is impossible to prove,
> > beyond a reasonable doubt, the existence or nonexistence of a Designer of our universe.
> > Details of these stances follow in the reply itself:
> >
> > On Saturday, December 23, 2023 at 1:32:19 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 12/22/23 7:33 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> >
> >>> PS Don't think I am devoid of Christmas spirit. I had a nice exchange with
> >>> your sidekick Erik Simpson, and with him I am following Hemidactylus's
> >>> advice to call a truce for the season. But Christmas means nothing to a
> >>> person like you, who think God and a life after death are fairy tales
> >>> that normal adults need to grow out of.
> >
> > That's an extreme of hard atheism that I think YOU need to grow out of.
> > One can be a hard atheist and still not think that there is something wrong
> > with not being one.

> You're responding to yourself there, to a bit where you imagine what I
> might think.

You've gone on record about the last clause in my PS; the bit that
you mindlessly taunt about is a reaction to that established fact.
What part of "need to grow out of" didn't you understand in your ignoring this basic connection?

> >> You don't believe in either God or a life after death, right?
> >
> > "believe in" is not a term I like to use, because it can be used to denote "trust"
> > where God or gods is concerned, as well as "conviction of its existence."
> > And "trust" is not useful for talking about the main point of disagreement
> > between you and me. That point is illustrated by what comes next:

> One would hope so, since that paragraph says nothing substantive.

Gaslighting noted.

> >> Last I heard, you were 90% certain that they didn't exist.
> >
> > Just plain false where a life after death is concerned. Its existence
> > is not logically connected with that of God or gods; only its nature is, if it does exist.

> Again, you avoid taking any position.

Shameless ducking of the issue of "Just plain false," noted.

I began and copiously participated in a very long thread on how
people in t.o. react to the issue of life
after death, and said plenty about my views on it.


I've snipped two short things you wrote and one sentence I wrote
to get to one which you totally ignored below.

> > The 90% refers to a subjective confidence level; I have no idea what the objective
> > measure of correctness is or whether there even can be one.

> > The number is as low as it is because I bring the Designer of our universe , if any,
> > in via a very different universe in a multiverse of which our ca. 14 gigayear
> > old universe
> > is a vanishingly small fraction, as would be the universe of the Designer.
> > I'm sure you can recall this kind of talk from me several times in the past.

> What number?

That does it. I will waste no more time on you until you stop acting like a troll.

> You still haven't claimed any number. I don't think your
> position has so far been coherently expressed.

<remainder deleted>


Peter Nyikos

[mohammad...@gmail.com]

Just entertaining uncertainty is not sufficient for honesty. You should also consider the judgment that you are stupid.

The evidence of how subjectivity works, is directly available to you, in the logic that you yourself use intuitively in common discourse, with subjective words, like for instance the word "beautiful". The logic of subjectivity is that the spirit chooses, and the spirit is identified with a chosen opinion. The very simple logic of subjectivity clearly shows, that the subjective part of reality, is the part of it that chooses. The subjective part of reality, chooses how the objective part of reality, turns out.

Which if true, is something you could have known, and should have known, therefore the judgment of stupidity.

The name God is defined in terms of Him being a creator. Which places God in the subjective part of reality, the spiritual domain. Therefore God can only confirmed to be real with a chosen opinion. Same as emotions and personal character of people can only be confirmed to be real, with a chosen opinion, because they are also defined in terms of being on the side of choosing things.

1. Creator / chooses / spiritual / subjective / opinion
2. Creation / chosen / material / objective / fact



Op woensdag 3 januari 2024 om 21:52:28 UTC+1 schreef peter2...@gmail.com:

[John Harshman]

A little bit too brief, as it happens, and much of it wasted on simple
invective. Please try again, this time aiming for clear meaning rather
than mere expressions of contempt.

>>>> You don't believe in either God or a life after death, right?
>>>
>>> "believe in" is not a term I like to use, because it can be used to denote "trust"
>>> where God or gods is concerned, as well as "conviction of its existence."
>>> And "trust" is not useful for talking about the main point of disagreement
>>> between you and me. That point is illustrated by what comes next:
>
>> One would hope so, since that paragraph says nothing substantive.
>
> Gaslighting noted.

Again, too brief to say anything.

>>>> Last I heard, you were 90% certain that they didn't exist.
>>>
>>> Just plain false where a life after death is concerned. Its existence
>>> is not logically connected with that of God or gods; only its nature is, if it does exist.
>
>> Again, you avoid taking any position.
>
> Shameless ducking of the issue of "Just plain false," noted.
>
> I began and copiously participated in a very long thread on how
> people in t.o. react to the issue of life
> after death, and said plenty about my views on it.

I don't recall reading that, and perhaps what you said was
characteristically unclear anyway.

> I've snipped two short things you wrote and one sentence I wrote
> to get to one which you totally ignored below.

Note that so far you have totally ignored everything I have said. And I
can't tell what it is you think I ignored.

>>> The 90% refers to a subjective confidence level; I have no idea what the objective
>>> measure of correctness is or whether there even can be one.
>
>>> The number is as low as it is because I bring the Designer of our universe , if any,
>>> in via a very different universe in a multiverse of which our ca. 14 gigayear
>>> old universe
>>> is a vanishingly small fraction, as would be the universe of the Designer.
>>> I'm sure you can recall this kind of talk from me several times in the past.
>
>> What number?
>
> That does it. I will waste no more time on you until you stop acting like a troll.

Good day, sir. I said, "good day!"

>> You still haven't claimed any number. I don't think your
>> position has so far been coherently expressed.

And still hasn't.

[zen cycle]

On 1/5/2024 6:29 PM, John Harshman wrote:
>
>> That does it. I will waste no more time on you until you stop acting
>> like a troll.
>
> Good day, sir. I said, "good day!"

"It's like "piss off" but with a little touch of class"
https://youtu.be/OMkJIR9pX1w?si=INce1B36UiSVjkp2

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, January 5, 2024 at 6:17:30 PM UTC-5, mohammad...@gmail.com wrote:

> Just entertaining uncertainty is not sufficient for honesty. You should also consider the judgment that you are stupid.

Whose judgment, and why?

I think I'm beginning to understand where you are coming from, Nando. There seems to be an imperfect translation
into English that kept me from understanding before. "Subjective" and "objective" are understood very differently
in everyday English than are the philosophical concepts "subject" and "object" that are devilishly difficult to convey to materialists.

I am a conscious person with a personal identity that persists through decades: a SUBJECT.
The table on which my laptop is resting is a mere physical OBJECT.

>
> The evidence of how subjectivity works, is directly available to you, in the logic that you yourself use intuitively in common discourse, with subjective words, like for instance the word "beautiful".

These words describe aspects of my conscious experience. The primordial earth had nothing
that anything of the time could call "beautiful." Had the universe been without conscious life
all through its existence, the words "beautiful" and "ugly" would have had no meaning.

>The logic of subjectivity is that the spirit chooses, and the spirit is identified with a chosen opinion. The very simple logic of subjectivity clearly shows, that the subjective part of reality, is the part of it that chooses. The subjective part of reality, chooses how the objective part of reality, turns out.

You seem to be opting for a philosophy of Idealism -- a word meaning something very different
in everyday speech than it does in the philosophy of mind and in epistemology.

I lean towards dualism. This entails the belief that I cannot choose how my ancestors of the Mesozoic era turned out.

Had the placental mammals at the end of that era been wiped out, I would not exist to choose any part of reality.

> Which if true, is something you could have known, and should have known, therefore the judgment of stupidity.

Sorry, you do not have the right to call someone stupid on such grounds unless you address the difference
between your philosophy and his.

>

> The name God is defined in terms of Him being a creator.

You might have defined God out of existence. I acknowledge that it is not out of question for
there to have been a *creator* of our universe, but it is safer to hypothesize that
there was a *designer* of our universe who took some matter and energy that originated
in His universe and used it to fashion a new universe with very different physical properties.

Even so, I have doubts about a Being even that powerful existing. Subjectively, I rate
His existence at about a 10% probability.

> Which places God in the subjective part of reality, the spiritual domain.

I would prefer to say, "the domain of Subjects, but Subjects so much more
wise and powerful than ourselves, that worship of Him is an appropriate response,
with immense gratitude for having made our existence possible."

>Therefore God can only confirmed to be real with a chosen opinion.

Do you think YOU can only be confirmed to be real with someone's chosen opinion?

It was not mere opinion that led Descartes to say, "I am, I exist every time I think."
It was his immediate experience of reality. And like unto it was a statement
uttered by a golem in a story: "Time is."

> Same as emotions and personal character of people can only be confirmed to be real,
with a chosen opinion, because they are also defined in terms of being on the side of choosing things.

Are you saying, in different words, that the character of people is determined by the choices they make?
If so, I agree.

>
> 1. Creator / chooses / spiritual / subjective / opinion
> 2. Creation / chosen / material / objective / fact

Subjects like myself don't just have opinions. We understand facts,
such as the Pythagorean theorem or the existence of infinitely many prime numbers.
By "we" I mean not just myself but everyone intelligent enough to understand
these facts if they are properly explained to them.


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

PS you didn't reply to, or even allude to, anything preserved below.
But I left in everything below in case you might want to refer
to it in any reply you make to me.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 12:32:29 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On 1/3/24 5:19 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> > On 1/3/24 12:51 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> This is a reply to the tail end of a post on JAMES TOUR VICTORIOUS?!
> >> Despite the use of our two names, this OP is issue-oriented.
> >> It is because everyone's brand of religion (or the lack of one)
> >> is highly individual, even if the words used for it are the same,
> >> that I use our names to orient the readers.
> >>
> >> For "hard atheism" I use the definition I learned in alt.atheism: the
> >> unequivocal denial of the existence of a God or gods. For
> >> "agnosticism," the best
> >> definition of my brand is that it asserts that it is impossible to prove,
> >> beyond a reasonable doubt, the existence or nonexistence of a Designer
> >> of our universe.
> >> Details of these stances follow in the reply itself:
> >>
> >> On Saturday, December 23, 2023 at 1:32:19 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>> On 12/22/23 7:33 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>> PS Don't think I am devoid of Christmas spirit. I had a nice
> >>>> exchange with
> >>>> your sidekick Erik Simpson, and with him I am following Hemidactylus's
> >>>> advice to call a truce for the season. But Christmas means nothing to a
> >>>> person like you, who think God and a life after death are fairy tales
> >>>> that normal adults need to grow out of.

<snip for focus>


About the position that there is no Designer of our universe, I had written:

> >> The 90% refers to a subjective confidence level; I have no idea what
> >> the objective
> >> measure of correctness is or whether there even can be one.

[...]

> >> The number is as low as it is because I bring the Designer of our
> >> universe , if any, in via a very different universe in a multiverse
>>> of which our ca. 14 gigayear old universe is a vanishingly
> >> small fraction, as would be the universe of the Designer.
> >> I'm sure you can recall this kind of talk from me several times in the
> >> past.

[...]

> >> Were it not for the possibility of that very different universe, the
> >> 90% would become more like 99.99999999%.
>>> But even that is small compared to my conviction that
>>> there IS a multiverse, as opposed to your 19th century style
> >> conviction that our one little universe is all there is
>>> or was or can be. Carl Sagan was very much behind the times
>>>when he made that conviction into the opening sentence
> >> of his book, _Cosmos_.

<snip to get to your words, Erik>

> Your conviction of am enormous multiverse arouses my curiosity. How did
> you come to such a conclusion? I intend no hostility; just interest.

Yesterday was the last day of the Christmas season for us Catholics,
but you seem to be receptive to the idea of continuing our truce
[see the PS before my first snip for focus] beyond it, and I am happy
to go along.

In a nutshell: what convinced me was what is commonly called
"the fine tuning of the basic physical constants." However, that often produces
the Pavlov-style reflex "tuning implies a tuner," so I prefer a more objective
expression, "the extremely low tolerance of the basic physical constants
to conditions compatible with the existence of intelligent life in the universe."

The basic idea is that these low tolerances make our universe violate
the principle of mediocrity to a staggering extent. How could it be the
only universe when all it takes is a tiny tweak here or a tiny tweak
there to destroy the possibility of intelligent life?

You started a thread on Martin Rees; how much did you read about
"fine tuning" there? I warmly recommend his book _Just_Six_Numbers_
as an introduction to the reasoning for there being a multiverse.

The book can be read in fewer hours than there are in a day, but to
save you a lot of time, here is something you can read in less than an hour
and still give you the gist of Rees's argument:

https://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTICLES/rees.asp

Here are my two favorite examples, because of their simplicity and
the low tolerances. One is symbolized by a fancy ornate N, the other
by a big Greek epsilon. I've added some details in brackets to what you
see in the webpage.

N = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [10^36]
The cosmos is so vast because there is one crucially important huge number in nature. N measures the strength of the electrical forces that hold atoms together, divided by the force of gravity between them. If it had a few less zeros [30 instead of 36], only a short-lived and miniature universe could exist. [Stars would be crowded so much together that stable planetary orbits would be great rarities.] No creatures would be larger than insects, and there would be no time for evolution to lead to intelligent life. [A star the mass of our sun would burn out in about 10,000 years.]

*More* zeros might not be a problem, but my other favorite is severely restricted on both ends.
It is related to the ratio of the nuclear force holding atomic nuclei together to the
electromagnetic repulsion tending to blow them apart, but its actual definition
is a bit more subtle: it is the amount of energy released when a helium nucleus
results from the fusion of what started out as four protons.

epsilon = 0.007
Another number, epsilon, defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. The value of epsilon 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, and gold and uranium are rare, because of what happens in the stars. If epsilon were 0.006 or 0.008, we could not exist. [If it were .006, no atoms but hydrogen could form; if it were .008, water and carbon would exist in trace amounts because most atomic nuclei would be many times bigger than oxygen nuclei.]


Does that help?

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

Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

There's a hidden assumption that you need to nail down: that the
constants you mention are drawn from a distribution of possibilities
that you know sufficiently to say that the range you accept as resulting
in the possibility of life is a small proportion of the distribution,
i.e. that a universe within that range has a low probability. How was
this determined?

It's no use saying that only a slight variation would be tolerated
unless you know what range is possible (and what the shape of the
distribution is).

[jillery]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2024 22:16:21 -0800, John Harshman
<john.h...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 1/9/24 7:20 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

IIRC Steve Carlip et al pointed this out to him years ago, before
Carlip gave up posting to T.O. Apparently Nyikos and R.Dean enjoy
recycling the same old PRATTs.

--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Tuesday, January 9, 2024 at 7:42:35 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, January 5, 2024 at 6:17:30 PM UTC-5, mohammad...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Just entertaining uncertainty is not sufficient for honesty. You should also consider the judgment that you are stupid.
> Whose judgment, and why?
>
> I think I'm beginning to understand where you are coming from, Nando. There seems to be an imperfect translation
> into English that kept me from understanding before. "Subjective" and "objective" are understood very differently
> in everyday English than are the philosophical concepts "subject" and "object" that are devilishly difficult to convey to materialists.
>
> I am a conscious person with a personal identity that persists through decades: a SUBJECT.
> The table on which my laptop is resting is a mere physical OBJECT.

While the notion of having some profound insight into what Nando is saying entertains, and in ways I think
we have a matched set, I'm just here to drop something off that will enrage both so as to better foster
their mutual admiration.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398369-why-free-will-doesnt-exist-according-to-robert-sapolsky/

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 4:37:35 AM UTC-5, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 9, 2024 at 7:42:35 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Friday, January 5, 2024 at 6:17:30 PM UTC-5, mohammad...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > Just entertaining uncertainty is not sufficient for honesty. You should also consider the judgment that you are stupid.
> > Whose judgment, and why?
> >
> > I think I'm beginning to understand where you are coming from, Nando. There seems to be an imperfect translation
> > into English that kept me from understanding before. "Subjective" and "objective" are understood very differently
> > in everyday English than are the philosophical concepts "subject" and "object" that are devilishly difficult to convey to materialists.
> >
> > I am a conscious person with a personal identity that persists through decades: a SUBJECT.
> > The table on which my laptop is resting is a mere physical OBJECT.

> While the notion of having some profound insight into what Nando is saying entertains, and in ways I think
> we have a matched set,

Yes. I am also entertained by what you are saying here. We are a matched set in that respect.

> I'm just here to drop something off that will enrage both so as to better foster
> their mutual admiration.

How can I be enraged when Robert Sapolsky, who denies free will, ducks the essential
question of the interviewer, Timothy Revell, in a transparent way?
I can only be amused by how inferior his whole argument against free will is to others
I have seen -- yet they too have been shot down.

Now Nando might be enraged, but let's wait until we hear from him, shall we?

> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398369-why-free-will-doesnt-exist-according-to-robert-sapolsky/

The relevant excerpts:

Revell:
Is there, when people come to you and say, “Oh, but there’s still a little bit of room,” you know, “These are all things that influence me on a given day. of course, if it’s hot, I’m more likely to go outside and enjoy the sun, but it’s still my decision,” how do you go from that, from influences, to, “It’s not just influences, everything we do is dictated in one way or another, by this whole combination of factors’?

Note the words, "more likely." Now watch the denier's response:

Sapolsky:
look at some behaviour, you just pulled the trigger on a gun, like something very consequential, and you could probably even identify the three-and-a-half neurons in the motor cortex that sent that command to your muscles.
Show me, let’s examine those three-and-a-half neurons that just did that. Show me that what they did was completely impervious to what was going on in any other neuron surrounding them, but at the same time, show me that it was impervious to whether you were tired, stressed, sleepy, happy, well-fed, at that moment.


In short, Sapolsky was completely impervious to the words, "more likely."
You may be impressed by his "clever" mangling of logic, but I'm not.

Now watch some smart alec claim that I am taking all this out
of context, yet not lifting a finger to show how the context
is supposed to make a wise man out of Sapolsky.

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

University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

PS The overall effect here is the age-old stalemate:
free will has neither been proved nor convincingly argued against.
Sapolsky is begging the question a bit later by saying that proof
of his brand of imperviousness would convince him.

[Nando Ronteltap]

The judgment that you are stupid, by a fair judge, and that you would accept the judgment. Obviously the consideration is, that it would be a helpful judgment. That by opening up to such a judgment that you are stupid, that then you would see the truth.

You, like everyone, expresses subjective opinions all the time, like on relations, and politics. So then you are supposed to know the logic of it, so that you can produce good personal opinions, by checking your personal opinions with your intellectual understanding of it. It is basic civilization to understand the concepts of fact & opinion. You should know it.

There is no imperfect translation to English happening here, again you would not say such things, if you opened up to the judgment that you are stupid. What is happening is that you have the wrong idea about how choosing works, the wrong idea that choosing is explained in terms of figuring out what is best. The correct explanation of choosing is in terms of spontaneity, that a decision can turn out one way, or another in the moment.

If choosing is explained in terms of figuring out what is best, then that requires a brain to do the figuring. A brain is a material thing, it is objective. So then if you define choosing in terms of figuring out what is best, then you have replaced the subjective spirit, with the objective brain. Then you have no functional concept of subjectivity anymore. So choosing is defined in terms of spontaneity, and choosing in terms of what is best is a complicated way of choosing, involving several decisions, which decisions are all spontaneous.

Subjectivity is all logical, and there is no room for nonsense like Descartes. An event can turn out A or B in the moment. It turns out A. Which is a decision. Then you can choose a personal opinion, in what spirit the decision was made. Choose between the subjective words P and Q. Choose Q, then your personal opinion is that A was chosen in a spirit of Q.

The EVIDENCE of how subjective words are used in common discourse, shows that this is how it works. Someone chooses something, I can choose the opinion he is courageous or reckless, in the decision that he makes. Either opinion is equally logically valid. Which validity does not mean that the opinion is morally upright, which can be contested on a subjective basis.

And that does mean that I as being a decision maker can only be acknowledged to be real, with a chosen opinion. There are the facts of an organization of decision making processes in my human body, and the fact of what possibilities I have available to choose from, and then there is the opinion in what spirit I choose what I do.

And I don't particularly need any certainty about my existence as being a decision maker. That is basically like trying to objectify me as being a decision maker, which is an awful way to be treated. Because if personal character of someone is regarded as a factual issue, then there is no mercy, no cruelty either, in reaching a conclusion about what someone's personal character is. Because facts are forced by evidence, so there is no freedom to be either merciful, or cruel in judgment. Then I get an emotionless judgment on my personal character, on me, which is disgusting. It is basic lack of civilization.

Proper is, to choose a personal opinion on the personal character of someone. You choose the personal opinion on what my personal character is, from your own emotions, and personal character. My personal character, is greeted, by your personal character. Subjectivity is not a problem, it works.

You cannot ignore the evidence of how subjectivity works, that is in common discourse, and then pretend to have anything meaningful to say about it. What's in common discourse, is the real subjectivity.

Facts are also validated by creationism, in category 2. Facts apply to creations, not creators. Facts are models of creations. Not to be confused with feelings of certainty, which may or may not be associated to any particular fact.


Op woensdag 10 januari 2024 om 01:42:35 UTC+1 schreef peter2...@gmail.com:

[peter2...@gmail.com]

In contrast to the reply I made to you about an hour and a half ago,
I am not amused by this earlier retort to me by you, "Daggett."

On Wednesday, January 3, 2024 at 6:37:28 PM UTC-5, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 3, 2024 at 3:52:28 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > This is a reply to the tail end of a post on JAMES TOUR VICTORIOUS?!
> > Despite the use of our two names, this OP is issue-oriented.
> > It is because everyone's brand of religion (or the lack of one)
> > is highly individual, even if the words used for it are the same,
> > that I use our names to orient the readers.
> >
> > For "hard atheism" I use the definition I learned in alt.atheism: the
> > unequivocal denial of the existence of a God or gods. For "agnosticism," the best
> > definition of my brand is that it asserts that it is impossible to prove,
> > beyond a reasonable doubt, the existence or nonexistence of a Designer of our universe.
> > Details of these stances follow in the reply itself:

> Your indulging in self-serving partial views.
> You have a history of calling people atheists with invidious connotations of that
> entailing their being immoral.

You are projecting Glenn's attitude onto me. You couldn't document me
behaving that way if your life's savings depended on it.

You embellish this guilt by association with "garbage out"
that relies on your "garbage in":

>You use it as character assassination, often in the
> context of various poisoning the well fallacies and ad hominem fallacies.


> Your cherry-picked definitions here evade you equivocal usage in the past.

There is nothing cherry-picked about them. They use official definitions
adopted by alt.atheism in its heyday. Your "equivocal" is pejorative
spin-doctoring of my not making the distinctions I make here all the time.

> Atheism is a lack of belief in god(s).

That's what they called "weak atheism":

On Weak Atheism
This is often understood as simply lacking the belief in the existence of gods. But it is different from implicit atheism in the respect that the weak atheist calls him- or herself an atheist. The weak atheist does have an attitude towards theism, namely a sceptical one: he or she questions the validity and possibility of theistic claims.
-- https://web.archive.org/web/20161016015426/http://alt-atheism.org/atheism:onatheism

> As is pointed out often, the typical difference
> between an atheist and a theist is that an atheist lacks belief in one additional god
> compared to a theist. That is a fairer starting point.

Only if one does not use adjectives like "Hard" (or "Strong," a somewhat more general concept):

On Strong Atheism
This is also explained as the belief that particular gods, or all gods, do not exist. However, this is confusing and causes many people to think that atheism is a kind of belief, a sort of anti-religiousreligion. It's better to say that the strong atheist feels more certain and has a stronger attitude towards theism than the weak atheist. A strong atheist rejects the notion of gods in general or the notion of a particular god (while remaining somewhat indifferent regarding other god-concepts).
-- *ibid.*

> Your weave into agnosticism is similarly not done fairly. A statement that
> we can't know can easily apply to both theists and atheists.

Again you are at odds with the official designation:

On agnosticism
Thomas Huxley coined the term “agnosticism” to describe a method of inquiry, which simply accepts that which is established by natural reason and doubts that which is not. Weak atheists, strong atheists, and even deists have claimed to be “agnostics” in this sense, i.e., they do not claim to have a “gnosis” or hidden knowledge. . . .
--*ibid.*

The first sentence applies to me perfectly. All through my postings I have stuck to
scientific arguments, including the ones on ID. All hypothesized designers of
earth organisms were assumed to have evolved from the humblest microorganisms
on their home planets.


In contrast, Harshman did imply that he had (hidden, because he never argued for it)
knowledge that God does not exist, by calling it a fairy tale that adults
need to grow out of. He said the same thing about a belief in the existence
of life after death. That is about as strong as atheism can get.

> Being an atheist isn't in any way an assertion that one knows that there is no god(s).

See above.

> There is a conceptual category of people who feel certain in their belief
> that specific gods don't exist other than as story characters.

That's a mild form of strong atheism according to the definition.

>You almost
> certainly fit within that category regards Zeus and Apollo, probably Baal
> and for that matter certain people's conception of the christian god.

There's plenty to complain about a lot of conceptions of the Christian God.
I bought the book _Your_God_Is_Too_Small_ fifty years ago, and I warmly
recommend it to others.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later -- hopefully today.
I regret to say that what you wrote there is of the same pejorative
sort as the above, and I am not amused by it either.


Peter Nyikos

[Nando Ronteltap]

This Sapolsky does enrage me, although I never heard of him before. Basically he's an enemy, that I am at war with. Probably he is a tyrant, a socialist piece of shit, a sexual pervert, a woke nutcase.

How come he doesn't address the judgment that universities are currently considered by most conservatives to be shitholes, in thinking about what bad consequences may come from denial of free will? He seems to be saying that basically everything is going alright with universities, while there is a mental illness epidemic at universities, and the reputation of academics in general, is taking a nosedive. The culture of free will denial, is mainly at the universities. The universities, academics, isn't going well.

It must be the case, that this piece of shit objectifies emotions and personal character, same as a nazi objectifies personal character with racial science. He objectifies love, he objectifies hate, he objectifies courage, he objectifies cowardice. Because he simply does not acknowledge the entire subjective part of reality, which is the part of it that chooses. He would maybe be more sophisticated about it than a nazi, but then it seems many of those nazis were also very sophisticated about their objectification of personal character.


Op woensdag 10 januari 2024 om 10:37:35 UTC+1 schreef Lawyer Daggett:

[Abner]

I'm actually looking forward to seeing Peter's response to Nando's rejection of Peter's reinterpretation of Nando's screed. I think it will say a lot about where Peter really stands. Will he reject academia and join Nando's attack on it to gain Nando's approval? Will he reject Nando's beliefs now that they have been reaffirmed as not being what Peter was hoping? Will he continue to reinterpret Nando's beliefs as something more reasonable? Will he drop the thread entirely? I have to admit that I really can't predict the outcome on this one. It will be interesting to see what Peter does!

(Nando, alas, became predictably boring ages ago.)

[erik simpson]

On 1/11/24 6:21 AM, Abner wrote:
> I'm actually looking forward to seeing Peter's response to Nando's rejection of Peter's reinterpretation of Nando's screed. I think it will say a lot about where Peter really stands. Will he reject academia and join Nando's attack on it to gain Nando's approval? Will he reject Nando's beliefs now that they have been reaffirmed as not being what Peter was hoping? Will he continue to reinterpret Nando's beliefs as something more reasonable? Will he drop the thread entirely? I have to admit that I really can't predict the outcome on this one. It will be interesting to see what Peter does!
>
> (Nando, alas, became predictably boring ages ago.)
>

I suspect Peter will come to conclusion that most of us arrived at long
ago: Nando is a nutter who speaks no known language. Peter has often
claimed he "suffers fools gladly", but there's a limit to that suffering.

[Nando Ronteltap]

This just shows that it is not about argumentation about how subjectivity works, because you don't provide any whatsoever.

You are just psychologically stuck in this mode of conceiving of choosing in terms of figuring out the best option.

Op donderdag 11 januari 2024 om 17:37:37 UTC+1 schreef erik simpson:

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 11, 2024 at 9:22:36 AM UTC-5, Abner wrote

> I'm actually looking forward to seeing Peter's response to Nando's rejection of Peter's reinterpretation of Nando's screed.

I don't see much point to continuing to talk to someone who is not
interested in actual meeting of minds. He doesn't even make it clear whom
he is talking to., and he keeps nothing of what others are saying to him.

He reminds me of another Dutch speaker, Mark Verhaegan, who is only
interested in advertising his own pet theories. For a while he seemed
to have some interesting things to say in sci.bio.paleontology and, a
bit later, here in talk.origins. But after a while it got to be a one-way street
where he no longer responded in a meaningful way to others' criticisms,
but kept peddling the same old articles of his, mostly in obscure journals.

> I think it will say a lot about where Peter really stands. Will he reject academia and join Nando's attack on it to gain Nando's approval?

Perish the thought. I care not for the approval of someone who is
only interested in peddling his ideas.

> Will he reject Nando's beliefs now that they have been reaffirmed as not being what Peter was hoping?

I wasn't hoping for anything in particular, just a 2-way hashing out of issues.

> Will he continue to reinterpret Nando's beliefs as something more reasonable? Will he drop the thread entirely? I have to admit that I really can't predict the outcome on this one. It will be interesting to see what Peter does!

But are you interested in issues like OOL or evolution or ID or creationism?

>
> (Nando, alas, became predictably boring ages ago.)

Are you just another kibitzer, like "Kerr-Mudd, John"?


Peter Nyikos

[Nando Ronteltap]

Creationism is like E=mc2, or F=ma. It is a logically integrated conceptual scheme, and any deviation from it, is error. There is no trading of ideas and meeting somewhere in the middle, it is either creationism, or it is wrong.

You're just another intellectual fraud, and your atheism, agnosticism, whatever, it is all just about failing to accept the reality of any of what is completely subjective, and not really about God. You neither accept ordinary human emotions, as you also don't accept God, for the selfsame reason that they are not objective.

And then you are stuck in this mode of conceiving of choosing in terms of figuring out what is best. Which is why you conceive of a designer, rather than a creator, because the idea of choosing in terms of what is best, fits a designer.



Op vrijdag 12 januari 2024 om 04:07:36 UTC+1 schreef peter2...@gmail.com:

[Abner]

Abner wrote
>> I'm actually looking forward to seeing Peter's response to Nando's rejection
>> of Peter's reinterpretation of Nando's screed.

Peter wrote:
> I don't see much point to continuing to talk to someone who is not
> interested in actual meeting of minds. He doesn't even make it clear whom
> he is talking to., and he keeps nothing of what others are saying to him.

Pretty much. Nando has some weird idea that everyone who disagrees with
his weird belief system must subscribe to a different but equally weird belief
system that is, oddly enough, an integrated part of his belief system. It's almost
manchaeism in its ability to divide the world into two parts and ignore whatever
you say that doesn't fit into the views that Nando has assigned to you.

> > I think it will say a lot about where Peter really stands. Will he reject
>> academia and join Nando's attack on it to gain Nando's approval?

> Perish the thought. I care not for the approval of someone who is
> only interested in peddling his ideas.

Glad to hear it, though it would have been really interesting to watch!
I've seen similar events before, alas.

> > Will he reject Nando's beliefs now that they have been reaffirmed
>> as not being what Peter was hoping?

> I wasn't hoping for anything in particular, just a 2-way hashing out of issues.

I don't think Nando has any interest in that anymore. It's become a lot
easier for him to create an echo chamber where he can assign beliefs
to you instead.

> But are you interested in issues like OOL or evolution or ID or
> creationism?

Oh, I am, but it generally has to be new and the other person has to
have interesting things to discuss. One of the side-effects of having
read through these issues for decades is that I very rarely run into
anything new and interesting anymore. I skim here just in case something
interesting shows up. Nando was, for a while, one of the rare sources
of new ideas here, but then he went on mental repeat and became
boring. The same thing happened with RonO, alas. At this point most
of the stuff here that is new isn't on-topic and almost all the stuff here
that is on-topic isn't new.

I am considering that when google.groups stops working, I will just quietly
leave rather than find a replacement way into talk.origins. It may not be
worth the effort anymore.

[Nando Ronteltap]

You don't have to worry about what you're going to do, because you're soon going to die from covid.

All the interesting stuff is locked up under the precondition that academics accepts creationism. You cannot really do good science without comprehension of subjectivity, because you need to have a good judgment, about what is good science.

Now instead we have bad science, with the covid catastrope, which will soon lead to the death of most of you, because I assume most all of you are vaccinated, and most of your family and friends.

That prediction is again good science. It predicts correctly that the new variants are evolving in other parts than the spike protein region. And the next step in this so far correct model of sequence of events, is highly virulent variants, causing mass death.

This catastrophe would have been prevented, if people simply learned how subjectivity functions, same as the holocaust would have been prevented by people learning the same. The absolute refusal to learn about it, the vicious systematic rejection of human emotion, the rejection of reasoning, must result in catastrophe.

Op vrijdag 12 januari 2024 om 08:37:36 UTC+1 schreef Abner:

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, January 12, 2024 at 2:37:36 AM UTC-5, Abner wrote:

> > Abner wrote
> >> I'm actually looking forward to seeing Peter's response to Nando's rejection
> >> of Peter's reinterpretation of Nando's screed.

> Peter wrote:
> > I don't see much point to continuing to talk to someone who is not
> > interested in actual meeting of minds. He doesn't even make it clear whom
> > he is talking to., and he keeps nothing of what others are saying to him.

I was mistaken here: I had overlooked the attribution line that Nando's software produces
at the beginning of his posts, in Dutch. Since Nando is a 100% top-poster on this thread,
this line then comes at the end of his spiel. I also overlooked the three dots
that Google Groups put in at the end. Clicking on in for quoted text which,
in Nando's case, he often completely ignores.

> Pretty much. Nando has some weird idea that everyone who disagrees with
> his weird belief system must subscribe to a different but equally weird belief
> system that is, oddly enough, an integrated part of his belief system. It's almost
> manchaeism in its ability to divide the world into two parts and ignore whatever
> you say that doesn't fit into the views that Nando has assigned to you.

He has a totally fictitious idea of where I am coming from in both of his replies to me.
Where he got it is apparently a secret that at most one human being knows about.
I say "at most one" because he may have no idea of where he got it either.

[...]

> > But are you interested in issues like OOL or evolution or ID or
> > creationism?

> Oh, I am, but it generally has to be new and the other person has to
> have interesting things to discuss.

I've been discussing fine tuning with Öö Tiib on the thread,
Re: Re-Riposte to Fine Tuning - to keep the old one from exceeding 1000 posts

but at the moment he seems more interested in possible life on exoplanets.
I'll make some time either tomorrow or the day after to his latest post there:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/q-BiBJubH9w/m/sHtqJBACAQAJ
Jan 13, 2024, 9:22:38 AM

There is enough on first sight to get a good picture of how we are handling the topic.
If you click on the three dots at the top that Google puts in for earlier text,
you will see much more, including some things about fine tuning.

> One of the side-effects of having
> read through these issues for decades is that I very rarely run into
> anything new and interesting anymore.

I hope you find some of the linked post both new and interesting.

Over on this thread, my Jan 9, 2024, 10:22:34 PM reply to Erik Simpson
goes deeper into fine tuning than in the reply to Öö Tiib on the other thread,
with some concrete data that may be new (and interesting) to you.

I'll also tackle some other posts on these two threads tomorrow and Wednesday.

[...]

> I am considering that when google.groups stops working, I will just quietly
> leave rather than find a replacement way into talk.origins. It may not be
> worth the effort anymore.

I am also interested in sci.bio.paleontology [I plan do a post or two there tonight]
and a few other groups, so I do plan to be around one way or the other.
Two comparisons come to mind as to why I keep participating in t.o.

A bear, willing to put up with a lot of bee stings to get at some honey.

A gold mine, where you have to process a ton of ore to get an
ounce or two of gold.

I've gotten a lot of "gold and honey" from being challenged
and responding to challenges here, in my close to a total of two
decades of participation, on and off.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

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

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 1:17:35 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:

> On 1/9/24 7:20 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

> > On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 12:32:29 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:

> >> Your conviction of am enormous multiverse arouses my curiosity. How did
> >> you come to such a conclusion? I intend no hostility; just interest.
> >
> > Yesterday was the last day of the Christmas season for us Catholics,
> > but you seem to be receptive to the idea of continuing our truce
> > [see the PS before my first snip for focus] beyond it, and I am happy
> > to go along.
> >
> > In a nutshell: what convinced me was what is commonly called
> > "the fine tuning of the basic physical constants." However, that often produces
> > the Pavlov-style reflex "tuning implies a tuner," so I prefer a more objective
> > expression, "the extremely low tolerance of the basic physical constants
> > to conditions compatible with the existence of intelligent life in the universe."
> >
> > The basic idea is that these low tolerances make our universe violate
> > the principle of mediocrity to a staggering extent. How could it be the
> > only universe when all it takes is a tiny tweak here or a tiny tweak
> > there to destroy the possibility of intelligent life?

> There's a hidden assumption that you need to nail down:

"assumption" and "need" are too strong even for "beyond a reasonable doubt."
What is relevant is the standard of "preponderance of evidence".

> that the constants you mention are drawn from a distribution of possibilities
> that you know sufficiently to say that the range you accept as resulting
> in the possibility of life is a small proportion of the distribution,
> i.e. that a universe within that range has a low probability. How was
> this determined?

You are shifting all the burden of proof onto me, and there is no good
reason to go down that rabbit hole.

A common not-so-hidden assumption of "skeptics" [1] is,
"there may be some hidden law whereby the range of parameters
that are compatible with intelligent life, and their
distribution, makes life almost inevitable in a typical universe."

[1 ] as in "Skeptical Enquirer" and the forum we got locked out of when we weren't
sufficiently deferential to Prothero. IIRC the name of that forum was "skepticblog."

>
> It's no use saying that only a slight variation would be tolerated
> unless you know what range is possible (and what the shape of the
> distribution is).

There is plenty of use to it, because it is only by making the strong
assumption I described that a "skeptic" can convincingly avoid the dilemma of
either an intelligent designer of our universe or a vast and perhaps infinite multiverse.

> > You started a thread on Martin Rees; how much did you read about
> > "fine tuning" there? I warmly recommend his book _Just_Six_Numbers_
> > as an introduction to the reasoning for there being a multiverse.
> >
> > The book can be read in fewer hours than there are in a day, but to
> > save you a lot of time, here is something you can read in less than an hour
> > and still give you the gist of Rees's argument:
> >
> > https://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTICLES/rees.asp
> >
> > Here are my two favorite examples, because of their simplicity and
> > the low tolerances. One is symbolized by a fancy ornate N, the other
> > by a big Greek epsilon. I've added some details in brackets to what you
> > see in the webpage.
> >
> > N = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [10^36]
> > The cosmos is so vast because there is one crucially important huge number in nature. N measures the strength of the electrical forces that hold atoms together, divided by the force of gravity between them. If it had a few less zeros [30 instead of 36], only a short-lived and miniature universe could exist. [Stars would be crowded so much together that stable planetary orbits would be great rarities.] No creatures would be larger than insects, and there would be no time for evolution to lead to intelligent life. [A star the mass of our sun would burn out in about 10,000 years.]

I'll have more to say about this one in my next and final reply to this post of yours.
The bracketed concrete data is in the book by Rees. You won't find it in the webpage I linked:
that only has the unbracketed parts. The same is true of what I wrote about "Epsilon" below.

> > *More* zeros might not be a problem, but my other favorite is severely restricted on both ends.
> > It is related to the ratio of the nuclear force holding atomic nuclei together to the
> > electromagnetic repulsion tending to blow them apart, but its actual definition

> > is a bit more subtle: it is the [fraction of mass converted into energy] when a helium nucleus

> > results from the fusion of what started out as four protons.

The bracketed part up there is new, correcting what I wrote earlier.
More brackets follow in the quote from the website:

> > epsilon = 0.007
> > Another number, epsilon, defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. The value of epsilon 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, and gold and uranium are rare, because of what happens in the stars. If epsilon were 0.006 or 0.008, we could not exist. [If it were .006, no atoms but hydrogen could form; if it were .008, water and carbon would exist in trace amounts because most atomic nuclei would be many times bigger than oxygen nuclei.]

Even silicon, which I've talked about in my last reply to Öö Tiib on a different thread [2]
might be a great rarity.


[2] https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/q-BiBJubH9w/m/MpG5gmjZAAAJ

Re: Re-Riposte to Fine Tuning - to keep the old one from exceeding 1000 posts

Jan 12, 2024, 8:57:37

Now, *this* constant has a well-defined range: 0 to 1. With negative numbers,
converting hydrogen to helium would absorb energy, not add it, and
make fusion even harder than it is at epsilon = .006. And at epsilon = 1, all the mass
would be converted to energy, and no helium (or higher elements) would form at all.

But you have an uphill battle to convince people that a *fraction* of the interval (0.006, 0.008)
represents a "typical universe."


CONCLUDED IN NEXT REPLY TO THIS POST, probably tomorrow.

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

University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 1/16/24 3:14 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 1:17:35 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>
>> On 1/9/24 7:20 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>> On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 12:32:29 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
>
>>>> Your conviction of am enormous multiverse arouses my curiosity. How did
>>>> you come to such a conclusion? I intend no hostility; just interest.
>>>
>>> Yesterday was the last day of the Christmas season for us Catholics,
>>> but you seem to be receptive to the idea of continuing our truce
>>> [see the PS before my first snip for focus] beyond it, and I am happy
>>> to go along.
>>>
>>> In a nutshell: what convinced me was what is commonly called
>>> "the fine tuning of the basic physical constants." However, that often produces
>>> the Pavlov-style reflex "tuning implies a tuner," so I prefer a more objective
>>> expression, "the extremely low tolerance of the basic physical constants
>>> to conditions compatible with the existence of intelligent life in the universe."
>>>
>>> The basic idea is that these low tolerances make our universe violate
>>> the principle of mediocrity to a staggering extent. How could it be the
>>> only universe when all it takes is a tiny tweak here or a tiny tweak
>>> there to destroy the possibility of intelligent life?
>
>> There's a hidden assumption that you need to nail down:
>
> "assumption" and "need" are too strong even for "beyond a reasonable doubt."
> What is relevant is the standard of "preponderance of evidence".

Pointless word-wrangling. At any rate, there is in fact no evidence, as
far as I know. What evidence do you have?

>> that the constants you mention are drawn from a distribution of possibilities
>> that you know sufficiently to say that the range you accept as resulting
>> in the possibility of life is a small proportion of the distribution,
>> i.e. that a universe within that range has a low probability. How was
>> this determined?
>
> You are shifting all the burden of proof onto me, and there is no good
> reason to go down that rabbit hole.

You're the one making the claim. I make no claim. Neither of us can have
any idea whether the universe is fine-tuned unless we have some clue as
to the permissible range of these constants, as well as the degree of
correlation among them.

> A common not-so-hidden assumption of "skeptics" [1] is,
> "there may be some hidden law whereby the range of parameters
> that are compatible with intelligent life, and their
> distribution, makes life almost inevitable in a typical universe."

There is no way to know whether there is or is not. How can you assume
that there is not?

> [1 ] as in "Skeptical Enquirer" and the forum we got locked out of when we weren't
> sufficiently deferential to Prothero. IIRC the name of that forum was "skepticblog."
>
>>
>> It's no use saying that only a slight variation would be tolerated
>> unless you know what range is possible (and what the shape of the
>> distribution is).
>
> There is plenty of use to it, because it is only by making the strong
> assumption I described that a "skeptic" can convincingly avoid the dilemma of
> either an intelligent designer of our universe or a vast and perhaps infinite multiverse.

And it's only by making equally strong assumptions that you can think
there's evidence for either of the horns of that dilemma. I will note
that there is also no evidence for the existence of this supposed
designer and no evidence for the existence of a multiverse except that
certain physical theories imply one. In either case one must assume that
the possible range of physical constants is so broad that the relevant
values are extremely unlikely. How can you justify that assumption?

You can of course follow your current practice and deny everything, but
I doubt anyone would believe you. Anyone who makes the claim of
fine-tuning must justify a broad distribution of possible parameters, or
the claim is vacuous.

>>> You started a thread on Martin Rees; how much did you read about
>>> "fine tuning" there? I warmly recommend his book _Just_Six_Numbers_
>>> as an introduction to the reasoning for there being a multiverse.
>>>
>>> The book can be read in fewer hours than there are in a day, but to
>>> save you a lot of time, here is something you can read in less than an hour
>>> and still give you the gist of Rees's argument:
>>>
>>> https://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTICLES/rees.asp
>>>
>>> Here are my two favorite examples, because of their simplicity and
>>> the low tolerances. One is symbolized by a fancy ornate N, the other
>>> by a big Greek epsilon. I've added some details in brackets to what you
>>> see in the webpage.
>>>
>>> N = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [10^36]
>>> The cosmos is so vast because there is one crucially important huge number in nature. N measures the strength of the electrical forces that hold atoms together, divided by the force of gravity between them. If it had a few less zeros [30 instead of 36], only a short-lived and miniature universe could exist. [Stars would be crowded so much together that stable planetary orbits would be great rarities.] No creatures would be larger than insects, and there would be no time for evolution to lead to intelligent life. [A star the mass of our sun would burn out in about 10,000 years.]
>
> I'll have more to say about this one in my next and final reply to this post of yours.
> The bracketed concrete data is in the book by Rees. You won't find it in the webpage I linked:
> that only has the unbracketed parts. The same is true of what I wrote about "Epsilon" below.

Once more, any significance of this factoid relies on the distribution
of possible values being broad. If 6 fewer zeroes was much less likely
than the value we see, you have no argument.

>>> *More* zeros might not be a problem, but my other favorite is severely restricted on both ends.
>>> It is related to the ratio of the nuclear force holding atomic nuclei together to the
>>> electromagnetic repulsion tending to blow them apart, but its actual definition
>>> is a bit more subtle: it is the [fraction of mass converted into energy] when a helium nucleus
>>> results from the fusion of what started out as four protons.
>
> The bracketed part up there is new, correcting what I wrote earlier.
> More brackets follow in the quote from the website:
>
>>> epsilon = 0.007
>>> Another number, epsilon, defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. The value of epsilon 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, and gold and uranium are rare, because of what happens in the stars. If epsilon were 0.006 or 0.008, we could not exist. [If it were .006, no atoms but hydrogen could form; if it were .008, water and carbon would exist in trace amounts because most atomic nuclei would be many times bigger than oxygen nuclei.]
>
> Even silicon, which I've talked about in my last reply to Öö Tiib on a different thread [2]
> might be a great rarity.

Same point as before, in fact same point I made originally and you have
consistently evaded. Why can't you address it?

> [2] https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/q-BiBJubH9w/m/MpG5gmjZAAAJ
> Re: Re-Riposte to Fine Tuning - to keep the old one from exceeding 1000 posts
> Jan 12, 2024, 8:57:37
>
> Now, *this* constant has a well-defined range: 0 to 1. With negative numbers,
> converting hydrogen to helium would absorb energy, not add it, and
> make fusion even harder than it is at epsilon = .006. And at epsilon = 1, all the mass
> would be converted to energy, and no helium (or higher elements) would form at all.

That's a well-defined conceptual range, but it has nothing to do with a
well-defined possible range, much less a probability distribution. It
is, at least, an attempt to deal with the question. But it's an invalid
attempt.

> But you have an uphill battle to convince people that a *fraction* of the interval (0.006, 0.008)
> represents a "typical universe."

There is no way to argue for that, and I have never tried. What I argue
is that neither of us has any basis to suggest a possible distribution
of any of these constants.

[erik simpson]

On 1/16/24 3:14 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

That the universe is fine-tuned for us seems to me to be backwards. We
are fine-tuned for the universe, which should come as no surprise, since
we've had at least 4 Gy to get tuned, despite lots of changes to our
physical surroundings. If things were different, we'd be different, but
if they were too different we wouldn't be here to notice. How different
is "too"? Or am I missing your point here?

[jillery]

On Wed, 17 Jan 2024 11:16:56 -0800, erik simpson
<eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 1/16/24 3:14 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

>> On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 1:17:35?AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>
>>> On 1/9/24 7:20 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>

My impression is his point is to obfuscate his point until even he
doesn't know what is his point.

As you say above, those who argue fine-tuning fail to recognize that
life adapts to the conditions it finds itself, or dies, by definition.

[Nando Ronteltap]

The spiritually dead evolutionists go round the merry go round for the 1000th time or so, with the exactsame arguments.

Ofcourse I also present the creationist conceptual scheme for the 1000th time, but that is conclusive. E=mc2 is also repeated thousands of times. While you are all just questioning the exactsame thing forever, without a conclusion, repeating the exact same arguments over and over.


Op donderdag 18 januari 2024 om 08:32:43 UTC+1 schreef jillery:

[peter2...@gmail.com]

These last two days have been almost completely filled with necessary work,
due to my role as chair of a committee for our university's annual hosting of
a mathematics contest between high schools in the South Carolina midlands.
It's the first Saturday in February, and I have a great many details to coordinate.

I only have time for this one post today, but I hope to do several tomorrow.

The above paragraph was completely ignored by everyone who responded,
including you, Erik.

> >
> >>> You started a thread on Martin Rees; how much did you read about
> >>> "fine tuning" there? I warmly recommend his book _Just_Six_Numbers_
> >>> as an introduction to the reasoning for there being a multiverse.
> >>>
> >>> The book can be read in fewer hours than there are in a day, but to
> >>> save you a lot of time, here is something you can read in less than an hour
> >>> and still give you the gist of Rees's argument:
> >>>
> >>> https://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTICLES/rees.asp
> >>>
> >>> Here are my two favorite examples, because of their simplicity and
> >>> the low tolerances. One is symbolized by a fancy ornate N, the other
> >>> by a big Greek epsilon. I've added some details in brackets to what you
> >>> see in the webpage.

Nobody showed any interest in the following data.
Am I the only talk.origins participant who is interested in cosmology for the sake of
cosmology?

That got postponed.

Now for what you added this time, Erik:

> That the universe is fine-tuned for us seems to me to be backwards. We
> are fine-tuned for the universe,

You say "the" universe. Do you reject the idea of a multiverse?

Looking at what was said above about "epsilon," how would you expect ANY life to exist in
a universe where the only element is hydrogen?

> which should come as no surprise, since
> we've had at least 4 Gy to get tuned, despite lots of changes to our
> physical surroundings.

Those physical surroundings are fabulously rich compared to how things
could have been different, easily. That was what all the data on N and epsilon
was about.

>If things were different, we'd be different, but
> if they were too different we wouldn't be here to notice.

Not just we, but any form of life at all.

>How different is "too"?

You never absorbed the data on N and epsilon, otherwise you wouldn't be asking
this question. Looks like you didn't even TRY to absorb it.
Jillery's reply to you described you, not me.

>Or am I missing your point here?

You are missing the boat, not just my points. Could it be because
you cannot bear the thought of there being a multiverse? It was you
who asked why I believe there is one, remember?

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

University of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

You didn't see my reply?

>>>>> You started a thread on Martin Rees; how much did you read about
>>>>> "fine tuning" there? I warmly recommend his book _Just_Six_Numbers_
>>>>> as an introduction to the reasoning for there being a multiverse.
>>>>>
>>>>> The book can be read in fewer hours than there are in a day, but to
>>>>> save you a lot of time, here is something you can read in less than an hour
>>>>> and still give you the gist of Rees's argument:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTICLES/rees.asp
>>>>>
>>>>> Here are my two favorite examples, because of their simplicity and
>>>>> the low tolerances. One is symbolized by a fancy ornate N, the other
>>>>> by a big Greek epsilon. I've added some details in brackets to what you
>>>>> see in the webpage.
>
> Nobody showed any interest in the following data.
> Am I the only talk.origins participant who is interested in cosmology for the sake of
> cosmology?

You seem more interested in cosmology for the sake of theology. All that
number says about cosmology is that if things were different, they would
be different. Attaching a consequence of that difference for life isn't
cosmology at all.

I see no implication of such a thing in what he wrote.

> Looking at what was said above about "epsilon," how would you expect ANY life to exist in
> a universe where the only element is hydrogen?

One of course would not. Why would you consider that relevant?

>> which should come as no surprise, since
>> we've had at least 4 Gy to get tuned, despite lots of changes to our
>> physical surroundings.
>
> Those physical surroundings are fabulously rich compared to how things
> could have been different, easily. That was what all the data on N and epsilon
> was about.

No, that's what you made it about. But what do you mean by "things could
have been different", and especially what do you mean by "easily"? It
seems as if once again you are claiming a knowledge of the range and
distribution of possible values for this constant.

>> If things were different, we'd be different, but
>> if they were too different we wouldn't be here to notice.
>
> Not just we, but any form of life at all.
>
>
>> How different is "too"?
>
> You never absorbed the data on N and epsilon, otherwise you wouldn't be asking
> this question. Looks like you didn't even TRY to absorb it.
> Jillery's reply to you described you, not me.
>
>
>> Or am I missing your point here?
>
> You are missing the boat, not just my points. Could it be because
> you cannot bear the thought of there being a multiverse? It was you
> who asked why I believe there is one, remember?

You never answered the question, though, did you? And why would anyone
be unable to bear the thought of a multiverse?

[erik simpson]

On 1/18/24 7:25 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

I have no problem with the idea of multiverses. At present these are
entirely speculative, and if the speculation doesn't lead to some ideas
about how they might affect our universe it seems to me to be a waste of
time.

As I believe I've already mentioned the large number of "fundamental"
variables and possible dimensionless quantities one could construct, and
we have no idea why they they have the values they do. There are so
many things we don't understand yet, they certainly seem more
interesting subjects than dreaming of universes where there is only one
kin of particle or time runs backward (whatever that might mean).

None of these ramblings should be considered disparaging of Sir Rees,
who has contributed so much to our current understanding of the only
universe we know.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 18, 2024 at 11:37:43 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On 1/18/24 7:25 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > These last two days have been almost completely filled with necessary work,
> > due to my role as chair of a committee for our university's annual hosting of
> > a mathematics contest between high schools in the South Carolina midlands.
> > It's the first Saturday in February, and I have a great many details to coordinate.
> >
> > I only have time for this one post today, but I hope to do several tomorrow.

Alas, that hope was dashed. Committee work took up almost the whole day.

Not so: there is deep physics behind some of them, including the
ones made possible by Guth's highly respected theory of inflation.
Jillery could tell you about them, but that would involve walking back some insults
she made about me in reply to you, and I don't think either you or she want her
to do anything that drastic.

> and if the speculation doesn't lead to some ideas
> about how they might affect our universe it seems to me to be a waste of
> time.

Just as thinking about OOL would be a waste of time, eh?
We know how it has affected us, so what difference does it make
how it took place, eh?

> As I believe I've already mentioned the large number of "fundamental"
> variables and possible dimensionless quantities one could construct, and
> we have no idea why they they have the values they do.

I can't recall a single one of this "large number". Are you sure you got that specific?
That isn't your style on this thread, nor on any thread not involving paleontology.
You almost always prefer generalities to specifics.

>There are so
> many things we don't understand yet, they certainly seem more
> interesting subjects than dreaming of universes where there is only one
> kin of particle or time runs backward (whatever that might mean).

Martin Rees's sober analyses are a far cry from the second topic.
As for the first, don't you know that a typical hydrogen atom is made of
two kinds of particles in a very complicated interaction? [Atypical atoms add
one or two neutrons.]

Looks like you *still* haven't absorbed what I said about N and epsilon,
summarizing what Rees wrote about them.

In particular, a universe with hydrogen as the only element follows from
some deep physical properties of matter that involve epsilon.
A difference of less than .001 takes you from our rich universe
to that kind of impoverished universe.

> None of these ramblings should be considered disparaging of Sir Rees,
> who has contributed so much to our current understanding of the only
> universe we know.

If you ignore his analyses of how some fundamental dimensionless
constants contribute to making our universe so rich by sticking
to some very narrow intervals, what does that say about the
generality "so much"?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

University of So. Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[erik simpson]

How does the multiverse have anything to do with the origin of life?

>> As I believe I've already mentioned the large number of "fundamental"
>> variables and possible dimensionless quantities one could construct, and
>> we have no idea why they they have the values they do.
>
> I can't recall a single one of this "large number". Are you sure you got that specific?
> That isn't your style on this thread, nor on any thread not involving paleontology.
> You almost always prefer generalities to specifics.
>

I was a professional physicist for about a decade before I went over to
the Dark Side. I can't believe you aren't aware of the physical
quantities involved in characterizing the universe. You rail about them
at length in your esteem of Ree's six numbers book. Specific physics
isn't on topic here.

>
>> There are so
>> many things we don't understand yet, they certainly seem more
>> interesting subjects than dreaming of universes where there is only one
>> kin of particle or time runs backward (whatever that might mean).
>
> Martin Rees's sober analyses are a far cry from the second topic.
> As for the first, don't you know that a typical hydrogen atom is made of
> two kinds of particles in a very complicated interaction? [Atypical atoms add
> one or two neutrons.]
>
> Looks like you *still* haven't absorbed what I said about N and epsilon,
> summarizing what Rees wrote about them.
>
> In particular, a universe with hydrogen as the only element follows from
> some deep physical properties of matter that involve epsilon.
> A difference of less than .001 takes you from our rich universe
> to that kind of impoverished universe.
>
>
>> None of these ramblings should be considered disparaging of Sir Rees,
>> who has contributed so much to our current understanding of the only
>> universe we know.
>
> If you ignore his analyses of how some fundamental dimensionless
> constants contribute to making our universe so rich by sticking
> to some very narrow intervals, what does that say about the
> generality "so much"?

Dimensional analysis clarifies thinking about physical models, but
ultimately they are no more fundamental than any other variable we
choose for modeling. It also is appropriate to remember that
mathematical descriptions aren't physics. They're just the best
descriptions we have in our efforts to understand what's really
happening. Again, multiverses add nothing to our understanding.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

The preceding three day stretch was the most hectic in the last two years,
but things have finally calmed down, and tomorrow I will probably have time
to do several posts on t.o. It is only the lateness of time that confines me
to one today.

On Friday, January 19, 2024 at 10:37:44 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On 1/19/24 7:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, January 18, 2024 at 11:37:43 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >> On 1/18/24 7:25 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

> >>> On Wednesday, January 17, 2024 at 2:17:42 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>> On 1/16/24 3:14 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>> On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 1:17:35 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On 1/9/24 7:20 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 12:32:29 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Your conviction of am enormous multiverse arouses my curiosity. How did
> >>>>>>>> you come to such a conclusion? I intend no hostility; just interest.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Yesterday was the last day of the Christmas season for us Catholics,
> >>>>>>> but you seem to be receptive to the idea of continuing our truce
> >>>>>>> [see the PS before my first snip for focus] beyond it, and I am happy
> >>>>>>> to go along.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> In a nutshell: what convinced me was what is commonly called
> >>>>>>> "the fine tuning of the basic physical constants." However, that often produces
> >>>>>>> the Pavlov-style reflex "tuning implies a tuner," so I prefer a more objective
> >>>>>>> expression, "the extremely low tolerance of the basic physical constants
> >>>>>>> to conditions compatible with the existence of intelligent life in the universe."
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> The basic idea is that these low tolerances make our universe violate
> >>>>>>> the principle of mediocrity to a staggering extent. How could it be the
> >>>>>>> only universe when all it takes is a tiny tweak here or a tiny tweak
> >>>>>>> there to destroy the possibility of intelligent life?

<snip for focus>

> >>>>> A common not-so-hidden assumption of "skeptics" [1] is,
> >>>>> "there may be some hidden law whereby the range of parameters
> >>>>> that are compatible with intelligent life, and their
> >>>>> distribution, makes life almost inevitable in a typical universe."
> >>>>>
> >>>>> [1 ] as in "Skeptical Enquirer" and the forum we got locked out of when we weren't
> >>>>> sufficiently deferential to Prothero. IIRC the name of that forum was "skepticblog."
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> It's no use saying that only a slight variation would be tolerated
> >>>>>> unless you know what range is possible (and what the shape of the
> >>>>>> distribution is).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> There is plenty of use to it, because it is only by making the strong
> >>>>> assumption I described that a "skeptic" can convincingly avoid the dilemma of
> >>>>> either an intelligent designer of our universe or a vast and perhaps infinite multiverse.

<snip for focus>

<snip for focus>

> >>> Now for what you added this time, Erik:
> >>>
> >>>> That the universe is fine-tuned for us seems to me to be backwards. We
> >>>> are fine-tuned for the universe,
> >>>
> >>> You say "the" universe. Do you reject the idea of a multiverse?
> >>>
> >>> Looking at what was said above about "epsilon," how would you expect ANY life to exist in
> >>> a universe where the only element is hydrogen?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> which should come as no surprise, since
> >>>> we've had at least 4 Gy to get tuned, despite lots of changes to our
> >>>> physical surroundings.
> >>>
> >>> Those physical surroundings are fabulously rich compared to how things
> >>> could have been different, easily. That was what all the data on N and epsilon
> >>> was about.

<snip for focus>

> >> I have no problem with the idea of multiverses. At present these are
> >> entirely speculative,
> >
> > Not so: there is deep physics behind some of them, including the
> > ones made possible by Guth's highly respected theory of inflation.

You said nothing about this in your reply, Erik. Are you as unlettered
in cosmology as Athel is in OOL despite having written a book
on the biochemistry of life? It's no disgrace if you are like that --
I'm unlettered in some of the most active branches of topology, despite being a leading
researcher in set-theoretic topology.

> > Jillery could tell you about them, but that would involve walking back some insults
> > she made about me in reply to you, and I don't think either you or she want her
> > to do anything that drastic.
> >
> >
> >> and if the speculation doesn't lead to some ideas
> >> about how they might affect our universe it seems to me to be a waste of
> >> time.
> >
> > Just as thinking about OOL would be a waste of time, eh?
> > We know how it has affected us, so what difference does it make
> > how it took place, eh?
> >
> How does the multiverse have anything to do with the origin of life?

It has plenty to do with it, if OOL is so difficult to attain that even the
observable universe is unlikely to have another species with our
level of intelligence. Then a multiverse is the simplest way out of this mystery.

> >> As I believe I've already mentioned the large number of "fundamental"
> >> variables and possible dimensionless quantities one could construct, and
> >> we have no idea why they they have the values they do.
> >
> > I can't recall a single one of this "large number". Are you sure you got that specific?
> > That isn't your style on this thread, nor on any thread not involving paleontology.
> > You almost always prefer generalities to specifics.

You *still* don't mention a single one. Looks like your memory of what you "believe" you've
mentioned is as bad as that of John Harshman.

> I was a professional physicist for about a decade before I went over to
> the Dark Side. I can't believe you aren't aware of the physical
> quantities involved in characterizing the universe. You rail about them
> at length in your esteem of Ree's six numbers book.

You missed where I criticized him for using the word "recipe"
rather than "blueprint," which still leaves a lot of ingredients out.

>Specific physics
> isn't on topic here.

What could be more basic than the ratio between the electromagnetic
force and the gravitational? or the ratio between the nuclear and the
electromagnetic? Rees didn't talk about the latter directly, but "epsilon"
depends on it, though not in linear fashion.

Who ever claimed otherwise?

> They're just the best
> descriptions we have in our efforts to understand what's really
> happening. Again, multiverses add nothing to our understanding.

You are now arguing on the level of Ron Dean. That last sentence
of yours is self-referential in adding nothing to our understanding.


Peter Nyikos

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

University of South Carolina
https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
Specialty: set-theoretic topology

[erik simpson]

That's a particularly gratuitous insult. If you continue in this vein,
I'm through with this subject. As I see it, the ball is firmly in your
court. Please explain how a speculative multiverse could explain the
origin of life OR provide "richness" in our universe. That would remove
said universe from science fiction to something worth talking about.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 25, 2024 at 11:02:52 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On 1/25/24 7:37 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > The preceding three day stretch was the most hectic in the last two years,
> > but things have finally calmed down, and tomorrow I will probably have time
> > to do several posts on t.o. It is only the lateness of time that confines me
> > to one today.
> >
> > On Friday, January 19, 2024 at 10:37:44 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >> On 1/19/24 7:06 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, January 18, 2024 at 11:37:43 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>> On 1/18/24 7:25 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> >>>>> On Wednesday, January 17, 2024 at 2:17:42 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>>>> On 1/16/24 3:14 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 1:17:35 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On 1/9/24 7:20 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 12:32:29 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> Your conviction of am enormous multiverse arouses my curiosity. How did
> >>>>>>>>>> you come to such a conclusion? I intend no hostility; just interest.

I sense hostility in several places below. What changed your intentions?

> >>>>>>>>> Yesterday was the last day of the Christmas season for us Catholics,
> >>>>>>>>> but you seem to be receptive to the idea of continuing our truce
> >>>>>>>>> [see the PS before my first snip for focus] beyond it, and I am happy
> >>>>>>>>> to go along.

Looks like you didn't want the truce to extend beyond Christmas season after all.

> >>>>>>>>> In a nutshell: what convinced me was what is commonly called
> >>>>>>>>> "the fine tuning of the basic physical constants." However, that often produces
> >>>>>>>>> the Pavlov-style reflex "tuning implies a tuner," so I prefer a more objective
> >>>>>>>>> expression, "the extremely low tolerance of the basic physical constants
> >>>>>>>>> to conditions compatible with the existence of intelligent life in the universe."
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> The basic idea is that these low tolerances make our universe violate
> >>>>>>>>> the principle of mediocrity to a staggering extent. How could it be the
> >>>>>>>>> only universe when all it takes is a tiny tweak here or a tiny tweak
> >>>>>>>>> there to destroy the possibility of intelligent life?

<snip of things to be addressed in reply to Harshman, probably tomorrow>

<additional snip to get to an unsupported assertion of yours, Erik>

> >>>> I have no problem with the idea of multiverses. At present these are
> >>>> entirely speculative,

Later, you reveal that you meant that they were "science fiction,"
but that is inconsistent with there being serious physical theories backing them:

> >>> Not so: there is deep physics behind some of them, including the
> >>> ones made possible by Guth's highly respected theory of inflation.

> > You said nothing about this in your reply, Erik. Are you as unlettered
> > in cosmology as Athel is in OOL despite having written a book
> > on the biochemistry of life?

<crickets>

> > It's no disgrace if you are like that --
> > I'm unlettered in some of the most active branches of topology, despite being a leading
> > researcher in set-theoretic topology.
> >
> >
> >>> Jillery could tell you about them, but that would involve walking back some insults
> >>> she made about me in reply to you, and I don't think either you or she want her
> >>> to do anything that drastic.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> and if the speculation doesn't lead to some ideas
> >>>> about how they might affect our universe it seems to me to be a waste of
> >>>> time.

They affect our *understanding* of our universe by giving a
concrete meaning to the probability that a given universe of the multiverse
is hospitable to any kind of life.

There is a potential infinity of them in Linde's "perpetual inflation" hypothesis,
with no reason to think that *any* of the six "blueprint" constants is the same
in any but a vanishingly small percentage of them. Ironically, you would add MORE
to the list of six that anti-ID zealots have to take into account:

> >>>> As I believe I've already mentioned the large number of "fundamental"
> >>>> variables and possible dimensionless quantities one could construct, and
> >>>> we have no idea why they they have the values they do.
> >>>
> >>> I can't recall a single one of this "large number". Are you sure you got that specific?
> >>> That isn't your style on this thread, nor on any thread not involving paleontology.
> >>> You almost always prefer generalities to specifics.
> >
> > You *still* don't mention a single one. Looks like your memory of what you "believe" you've
> > mentioned is as bad as that of John Harshman.
> >
> >
> >> I was a professional physicist for about a decade before I went over to
> >> the Dark Side. I can't believe you aren't aware of the physical
> >> quantities involved in characterizing the universe. You rail about them
> >> at length in your esteem of Ree's six numbers book.
> >
> > You missed where I criticized him for using the word "recipe"
> > rather than "blueprint," which still leaves a lot of ingredients out.

Stephen M. Barr adds a few more ingredients in _Modern_Physics_and_Ancient_Faith_.
But your hostile preceding paragraph suggests that you don't want to hear about them.

> >
> > >Specific physics
> >> isn't on topic here.
> >
> > What could be more basic than the ratio between the electromagnetic
> > force and the gravitational? or the ratio between the nuclear and the
> > electromagnetic?

<crickets>

> > Rees didn't talk about the latter directly, but "epsilon"
> > depends on it, though not in linear fashion.

Stephen M. Barr does talk about the latter ratio [*op* *cit* pp. 125-126].
It goes by the name of "the fine structure constant".

<crickets>

> > > They're just the best
> >> descriptions we have in our efforts to understand what's really
> >> happening. Again, multiverses add nothing to our understanding.
> >
> > You are now arguing on the level of Ron Dean. That last sentence
> > of yours is self-referential in adding nothing to our understanding.
> >
> >
> That's a particularly gratuitous insult.

I wasn't insulting YOU, I was insulting the last sentence you had written.

I would have expected you to say something like this in reply
to the following, but you breezed past it as though it weren't there:

[repeated from above]

> > Looks like your memory of what you "believe" you've
> > mentioned is as bad as that of John Harshman.

But thanks for letting everyone know what utter contempt you
have for Ron Dean. How does it compare with your contempt
for Glenn -- or me, for that matter?

> If you continue in this vein,
> I'm through with this subject.

What vein? Are you completely ignoring the physics I've been writing about?

>As I see it, the ball is firmly in your
> court. Please explain how a speculative multiverse could explain the
> origin of life OR provide "richness" in our universe.

Think of how the following scenario sheds light
on the richness of one of the outcomes.

Suppose that, in a given hour, ten thousand people in the world
are flipping coins to see how long a "run" of one side they can
attain. Suppose one of them flips 30 heads in a row.

Before he gets to 30, don't you think anyone watching him would
become suspicious that he is flipping a 2-headed coin?

After all, the odds against him getting 30 in a row are more than a quadrillion to one.
In fact, it would be unusual to have even 20 in a row (ca. million to one odds)
in such a small sample of coin-flippers.

Yet, the odds against a universe bearing intelligent life are far worse
than quadrillion to one, unless the ranges and distributions are
tremendously loaded in favor of life. Lacking any evidence of such
loading, only a huge sample, in the form of a multiverse would take care of Hoyle's
suspicions that our universe is "a put-up job."

> That would remove
> said universe from science fiction to something worth talking about.

The ball is in your court to defend this polemical sentence against my analogy.

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

[erik simpson]

I have no idea of how you conclude that life is so unlikely. I think
it's probably very likely, since we see it, and there's no reason that
the conditions on earth are particularly exceptional. I'm not
"violating" any "truce", so I'm at a loss there as well. Let's say, I
just don't understand what your points are, and let it go at that.
We're making no progress on this subject.

[erik simpson]

You might have a look at Sabine Hossenfelder's video mentioned by Israel
Sardovnik.
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/01/brian-cox-debunked-big-bang-wait-what.html
(if you'll ignore the shameless ad at the end of the short video.) It
well illustrates what I mean by a complete disconnect of possible other
universes with ours. It's an artifact of placing too much faith in the
language of the descriptive models as representative of of the "real world).

[Öö Tiib]

How to make progress in that subject? We can not say (without lying)
that we know if one or other opinion is more right or wrong.
Only thing that we can say is that we do not have enough information
for to decide it. Just a thought experiment: Someone has opinion that
mere 10K years ago a civilization about like ours suicided on Proxima
Centauri B. No way even to figure to what extent it is possible or
impossible. Some project like Breakthrough Starshot coming out of
science fiction phase might bring more information "only" after 120
years.

[John Harshman]

I believe you are mistaking Peter's claim about unlikelihood. You seem
to be talking about the probability of life in this universe, while he's
talking about the probability of a universe as hospitable to life as
ours. Mind you, he also thinks the probability of life in any particular
spot in this universe is extremely low too, but that's another question.

[erik simpson]

It's quite likely I mistake lots of what Peter says, since I have a hard
time understanding him. It seems we're arguing now of probabilities
when we have no data, or at best one datum; life exists here. That
proves possibility, but no more.

Deeper thinkers than me discuss the possibility of other physics and
other universes. Since the early inflationary period, lots of our
universe that we used to be able to "see" or at least feel has
disappeared to us, never to be seen again unless the expansion reverses.
Presumably those parts use/used the same physics we do, but we still
lack full understanding of that also.

[erik simpson]

I'm in full agreement. Strenuous argument from ignorance doesn't
achieve anything.

[John Harshman]

I don't think he's all that interested in having people understand him,
or at least he assumes that his reader already knows what he means
without having to glean it from what he says, because it's just so
obvious. He seldom responds in any serious way to requests for
clarification, because he thinks all such requests must be insincere
given the obviousness mentioned above. This does tend to result in
permanent inscrutability.

And the absence of necessary data has been brought up many times, never
resulting in any real engagement with the issue by Peter. Perhaps this
will change, though experience suggests otherwise.

[jillery]

On Fri, 19 Jan 2024 19:06:48 -0800 (PST), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I have no problem with the idea of multiverses. At present these are
>> entirely speculative,
>
>Not so: there is deep physics behind some of them, including the
>ones made possible by Guth's highly respected theory of inflation.
>Jillery could tell you about them, but that would involve walking back some insults
>she made about me in reply to you, and I don't think either you or she want her
>to do anything that drastic.

To the contrary, jillery could mention several things about multiverse
without having to walk back anything jillery posted about you.

[israel sadovnik]

Can we say that it is possible to prove the existence of a Creator of our Universe?
The answer can be found in quantum physics because it is a very successful science,
but its interpretation is meaningless.
"Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense." /Roger Penrose/

But if QP is a successful mathematical theory, then in correct interpretation
can be hidden the Designer. God has a place for atheists too.

[jillery]

QP makes no sense to us only because our everyday experiences are best
described by statistical thermodynamics. Not sure why God should
limit itself to QP.

[Abner]

jillery wrote:
> QP makes no sense to us only because our everyday experiences are best
> described by statistical thermodynamics. Not sure why God should
> limit itself to QP.

God hides in things we don't understand; if we understand it, there is no need
to shove a god into that particular gap. If people learn to understand quantum
physics, the god they cultivated there will wither and die just as the rain and
thunder gods did in the face of meteorology.

[jillery]

Perhaps God hiding in QP would be alive and dead at the same time, a
quantum version of the Trinity.

[erik simpson]

Don't worry. Quantum mechanics is a black hole (or maybe a rabbit
hole). We'll never get to the bottom of it.

[israel sadovnik]

----------
God hides in the duality of quantum particles

[Abner]

jillery wrote:
> Perhaps God hiding in QP would be alive and dead at the same time, a
> quantum version of the Trinity.

That would be more appropriate for a binary deific system like Zoroastrianism. We'd
need 3 quantum states for a Trinity - alive, dead, and undead, for example. Well, that
explains the Holy Ghost ...

[Mark Isaak]

On 1/30/24 10:23 AM, israel sadovnik wrote:
> Can we say that it is possible to prove the existence of a Creator of our Universe?

It is possible to *disprove* the existence of a Creator of the universe,
given a couple reasonable assumptions and definitions. The assumption
is that cause precedes effect; the definitions are that the universe is
all that exists, and that a creator is a cause of what is created.

These mean that a Creator, if one exists, must be part of the universe.
As such, it cannot cause something which comes before it, or at the very
least is contemporaneous with it. A creator cannot create itself.

For those wanting a creator anyway, the easiest way around this is to
postulate multiple universes (i.e., deny the definition that the
universe is all that is), with the creator existing in a different universe.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[israel sadovnik]

On Thursday 1 February 2024 at 17:52:57 UTC+2, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 1/30/24 10:23 AM, israel sadovnik wrote:
> > Can we say that it is possible to prove the existence of a Creator of our Universe?
> It is possible to *disprove* the existence of a Creator of the universe,
> given a couple reasonable assumptions and definitions.

-----
Yeah, . . .
" If He (God) understands Math and Physics then He exists."
/ Frank Tipler. /
"GOD is a mathematician of a very high order.
He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe."
/Paul M. Dirac/

[J. J. Lodder]

File under: Non-existent understanding

> " If He (God) understands Math and Physics then He exists."

Jan