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The Many-worlds interpretation of QM does not mean that different universes have different fundamental constants. It's more generally accepted now that the val

The Many-worlds interpretation of QM does not mean that different universes have different fundamental constants. It's more generally accepted now that the values of the constants were contingent on conditions in the very early universe. This doesn't mean that a fork off of, say, our world right now would get different constants, but that in the early-universe time period there would be forks getting different values, which then evolved completely differently. In this view we exist in one which happened to get the "right" constants. The universe might be infinite in extent (e.g. Einstein-de Sitter) even though at any time you can only see a finite part of it, so even though the probability of life in any galaxy might be vanishingly small, as long as it's finite you can expect life to emerge somewhere. We don't have evidence of the universe being infinite in extent, though. So, there needs to be at least one level, which appeared out of nowhere, or always existed, in which computers can be built to run the simulation. Again, the claim in the simulation argument is not "uncreated universes are impossible". It's that "an uncreated universe capable of giving rise to simulations is a less specific requirement and therefore more likely to occur". The idea of a creator God Which I explicitly said I wasn't talking about. For someone who's tired of repeating himself you sure seem fine with making me do it.

DonaldFisk 10y ago
> It's more generally accepted now that the values of the constants were contingent on conditions in the very early universe. Cite? I'm unaware of any such consensus. > We don't have evidence of the universe being infinite in extent, though. The universe's density seems to be very close to the critical density: http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/Critical+Density http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/Critical+Density http://www.space.com/24309-shape-of-the-universe.html http://www.space.com/24309-shape-of-the-universe.html http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_concepts.html http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_concepts.html
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  When I was doing my thesis work I was reading papers which argued that quite a few, and perhaps all, of the "fundamental" constants were free to take on values during a brief period in the early history of the universe and took on their observed values due to contingency or chance of conditions which obtained in the early universe. This seemed relatively uncontroversial and was often repeated by reputable sources. Certainly nobody seemed to be arguing that the particular values we observe are logically-necessary consequences of physics, and in fact people typically observed that physics as we understand it works just fine with different values; it just gives rise to different behavior. But at any rate you seem not to be a particularly pleasant interlocutor, and like you I'm tired of repeating myself.
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_physical_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_physical_constan...) states: "The complete standard model requires 25 fundamental dimensionless constants (Baez, 2011). At present, their numerical values are not understood in terms of any widely accepted theory and are determined only from measurement." Paul Dirac, and a few others argued that the relative strengths of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces between elementary particles (e.g. within the hydrogen atom) is directly related to the age of the universe, i.e. that gravity is still becoming weaker, rather than acquiring its current strength close to the big bang. I'm interested in this subject - in particular the proposed mechanism and dimensionless constants involved, but can't find any papers arguing the conditions in the early universe determine their values.

DonaldFisk 10y ago

> It's more generally accepted now that the values of the constants were contingent on conditions in the very early universe. Cite? I'm unaware of any such consensus. > We don't have evidence of the universe being infinite in extent, though. The universe's density seems to be very close to the critical density: http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/Critical+Density http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/Critical+Density http://www.space.com/24309-shape-of-the-universe.html http://www.space.com/24309-shape-of-the-universe.html http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_concepts.html http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_concepts.html

ubernostrum 10y ago
When I was doing my thesis work I was reading papers which argued that quite a few, and perhaps all, of the "fundamental" constants were free to take on values during a brief period in the early history of the universe and took on their observed values due to contingency or chance of conditions which obtained in the early universe. This seemed relatively uncontroversial and was often repeated by reputable sources. Certainly nobody seemed to be arguing that the particular values we observe are logically-necessary consequences of physics, and in fact people typically observed that physics as we understand it works just fine with different values; it just gives rise to different behavior. But at any rate you seem not to be a particularly pleasant interlocutor, and like you I'm tired of repeating myself.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_physical_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_physical_constan...) states: "The complete standard model requires 25 fundamental dimensionless constants (Baez, 2011). At present, their numerical values are not understood in terms of any widely accepted theory and are determined only from measurement." Paul Dirac, and a few others argued that the relative strengths of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces between elementary particles (e.g. within the hydrogen atom) is directly related to the age of the universe, i.e. that gravity is still becoming weaker, rather than acquiring its current strength close to the big bang. I'm interested in this subject - in particular the proposed mechanism and dimensionless constants involved, but can't find any papers arguing the conditions in the early universe determine their values.