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I feel like the challenge of explaining fundamental constants understates the strength of anthropic reasoning. Most regions in space are empty voids — why aren’

I feel like the challenge of explaining fundamental constants understates the strength of anthropic reasoning. Most regions in space are empty voids — why aren’t we in such a void right now? Being anywhere near the orbit of a star is extremely unlikely a priori. Why are we on a planet with oceans teeming with other life forms, instead of a barren rocky desert, which seems to be the norm for planets in general? Why are we exactly on the surface of that planet, as opposed to being 1,000 kilometers up in the sky or down underground, swimming in hot magma? These are the questions where “Because those are the only conditions suitable for your existence to happen” is so obviously correct the questions make you roll your eyes. Applying the anthropic principle to fundamental constants is a speculative extension that might be right or wrong, but there are plenty of mundane coincidences that have no other answer.

leephillips 6y ago
There is an interesting book called _The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us_ by Victor J. Stenger where he shows that most of the fundamental constants that people may think can only be explained with some kind of anthropic principle, or more to the point, intelligent design, are really more constrained than that.
- nicoffeine 6y ago
  A great subject is also the cosmological constant. Introduced by Einstein, who later claimed it was the biggest blunder of his life, that has returned to make the math work for cosmological observations made in the 90s. As explained by Susskind[1], a sort of negative force that by one measurement is 2.88 x 10^-122 [2] and if it were only slightly different, the universe as we know it would not exist. Add in the "need" for observers in Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle[3], I would say that some extraordinary minds have recognized and proposed some strong anthropic arguments. In any case, the older I get, the more I realize I don't know a damn thing. As a poet once sang: Now, I wish I could write you a melody so plain That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain Of your useless and pointless knowledge [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cT4zZIHR3s&fbclid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cT4zZIHR3s&fbclid [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler
mannykannot 6y ago
And yet the anthropic principle is not the usual answer given to all these other issues that you apply it to here. That is not because just about everyone is too dumb to realize that it stands as a true statement about these circumstances; it is because we have better answers - answers that explain not only why we could not exist in these alternative scenarios, but which also give a coherent explanation of how the actual circumstances came to be... at least until we extend those explanations to the point where we run into facts such as the fine structure constant needing to be just about exactly what it is for any of this to work. The anthropic principle is only invoked where we do not have anything better in way of explanation. The anthropic principle is arguably an observation that things are the way they are, rather than an explanation of why they are that way.
- goodside 6y ago
  I’m not sure what you mean by “better answers” — is there a better answer to “Why am I not in intergalactic space right now?” than “life can’t form in the emptiness of space”? You can justify that with the causal reasons why life couldn’t form, like there being not enough atoms out of which to form life, no stars to provide energy, etc., but the conclusion is the same: Life can form some places much more easily than others, so we should expect to find ourselves in the places where it forms easily, even if those places are vastly unrepresentative of space in general.
  - posterboy 6y ago
    > Why am I not in intergalactic space right now? That's a different question than you initially posted. The anserr is trivial, so nobody would ask this question, except in the futuristic sense, "what's stopping me", or the naive sense, "why is the sky blue, who am I, and why does it hurt when my teeth grow". The initial question entsils a lot more, depending on how far you want to take it, at least, "why am I", but I would argue that independent of your or my own endeavour, it is ultimately deep. You can try to answer the "how", but not the "why" without circular reasoning. Circular reasoning (which is tautologic, but not necessarily a formal fallacy) is rather human indeed, insofar we ascribe reason ability exclusively to humans--because we are egoists, since we are limited by our event horizont. So in contrast to assuming the anthropic principle as an answer, I'd rather hold it with Plato. tl;dr: Here's the fallacy. "Why am I"--"because I am not not" is an inadmissable argument, if nonexistence (not being) cannot be the cause for anything. It's nothing, pretty much by definition. Coralary: If you take the short cut and reduce the double negation, "Why am I"--"Because I am" is a step back from descartes, "I think therefore I am", who managed at least to include a necessary argument for the definition of being human. Although, this only answers the how. Beyond that, I am only able to argue on linguistical semantic grounds. If "why" is as good as "what for", while "to be for something" means preference, the real content of the question becomes apparent. What am I to do, write more philosophical absurdity, get a cheese cake, or try to have my cake and eat it too?
tlb 6y ago
Empty space is like the pencils lying on the ground in the article's analogy. We can observe both habitable space and empty space, and we have a good theory to explain why we don't find ourselves in empty space. With some effort we can go to empty space and see what it's like. But we can't observe parts of the multiverse with different fine structure constants, which puts it in a different category of entities that Occam's razor recommends not to multiply.
- goodside 6y ago
  Agree completely, but a lack of direct observation isn’t the only evidence we have, at least in principle. If you had an unimaginably powerful computer that could run simulations to determine whether life could form for other values of fundamental constants, the answer would say something about the plausibility of an anthropic explanation for their values. If it turns out that any slight adjustment makes life (of any form, however alien) impossible, anthropic explanations are more likely. If it turns out that any choice of constants produces some form of life, anthropic explanations are less likely. We can’t run this simulation, but we can make at least weak inferences about what parts of the parameter space preclude life. More speculatively, as we’ve gathered more observation, we’ve repeatedly found a world consistent with the theory, “Things could be different; your local conditions are unrepresentative; there was a de facto parameter sweep and you’re in an odd corner of it.” Humans are in a very specific place with respect to their surroundings on many, many scales. Admittedly, though, not on the very largest scales we can observe. The cosmos does appear homogenous eventually. Anthropic cosmology is tantamount to the claim that this homogeneity isn’t the end of the story, and that on some “larger” scale (which might not correspond literally to spatial position), the non-homogeneity resumes and explains why our region is the way it is. If there were some a priori theoretical reason to suppose that constants actually do vary, just so slowly that they appear constant within any given Hubble volume, it would add credence to the explanation that we’re just once again in an odd part of a parameter sweep.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    Isn't the issue there verifying that our simulations of other values are accurate? For example within a certain range of values Newton's law of motion hold but outside of that they don't. We can simulate outside of that range as if they do but luckily can observe that those simulations don't hold experimentally.
srl 6y ago
I pretty much agree. Anthropic reasoning is very strong in some circumstances. If we can directly observe some planet, and see that there's no life on it, then it's pretty easy to answer the question "why are we on this world instead of that world?" The difficult case is the one where direct observation isn't possible. The neutron star example is good: they exist in our universe, but who has strong evidence or argument that there's no exotic life in/on the crust?
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Is that really the case? Or rather caused by our current limits of observation?

leephillips 6y ago

There is an interesting book called _The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us_ by Victor J. Stenger where he shows that most of the fundamental constants that people may think can only be explained with some kind of anthropic principle, or more to the point, intelligent design, are really more constrained than that.

nicoffeine 6y ago
A great subject is also the cosmological constant. Introduced by Einstein, who later claimed it was the biggest blunder of his life, that has returned to make the math work for cosmological observations made in the 90s. As explained by Susskind[1], a sort of negative force that by one measurement is 2.88 x 10^-122 [2] and if it were only slightly different, the universe as we know it would not exist. Add in the "need" for observers in Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle[3], I would say that some extraordinary minds have recognized and proposed some strong anthropic arguments. In any case, the older I get, the more I realize I don't know a damn thing. As a poet once sang: Now, I wish I could write you a melody so plain That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain Of your useless and pointless knowledge [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cT4zZIHR3s&fbclid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cT4zZIHR3s&fbclid [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler

mannykannot 6y ago

And yet the anthropic principle is not the usual answer given to all these other issues that you apply it to here. That is not because just about everyone is too dumb to realize that it stands as a true statement about these circumstances; it is because we have better answers - answers that explain not only why we could not exist in these alternative scenarios, but which also give a coherent explanation of how the actual circumstances came to be... at least until we extend those explanations to the point where we run into facts such as the fine structure constant needing to be just about exactly what it is for any of this to work. The anthropic principle is only invoked where we do not have anything better in way of explanation. The anthropic principle is arguably an observation that things are the way they are, rather than an explanation of why they are that way.

goodside 6y ago
I’m not sure what you mean by “better answers” — is there a better answer to “Why am I not in intergalactic space right now?” than “life can’t form in the emptiness of space”? You can justify that with the causal reasons why life couldn’t form, like there being not enough atoms out of which to form life, no stars to provide energy, etc., but the conclusion is the same: Life can form some places much more easily than others, so we should expect to find ourselves in the places where it forms easily, even if those places are vastly unrepresentative of space in general.
- posterboy 6y ago
  > Why am I not in intergalactic space right now? That's a different question than you initially posted. The anserr is trivial, so nobody would ask this question, except in the futuristic sense, "what's stopping me", or the naive sense, "why is the sky blue, who am I, and why does it hurt when my teeth grow". The initial question entsils a lot more, depending on how far you want to take it, at least, "why am I", but I would argue that independent of your or my own endeavour, it is ultimately deep. You can try to answer the "how", but not the "why" without circular reasoning. Circular reasoning (which is tautologic, but not necessarily a formal fallacy) is rather human indeed, insofar we ascribe reason ability exclusively to humans--because we are egoists, since we are limited by our event horizont. So in contrast to assuming the anthropic principle as an answer, I'd rather hold it with Plato. tl;dr: Here's the fallacy. "Why am I"--"because I am not not" is an inadmissable argument, if nonexistence (not being) cannot be the cause for anything. It's nothing, pretty much by definition. Coralary: If you take the short cut and reduce the double negation, "Why am I"--"Because I am" is a step back from descartes, "I think therefore I am", who managed at least to include a necessary argument for the definition of being human. Although, this only answers the how. Beyond that, I am only able to argue on linguistical semantic grounds. If "why" is as good as "what for", while "to be for something" means preference, the real content of the question becomes apparent. What am I to do, write more philosophical absurdity, get a cheese cake, or try to have my cake and eat it too?

tlb 6y ago

Empty space is like the pencils lying on the ground in the article's analogy. We can observe both habitable space and empty space, and we have a good theory to explain why we don't find ourselves in empty space. With some effort we can go to empty space and see what it's like. But we can't observe parts of the multiverse with different fine structure constants, which puts it in a different category of entities that Occam's razor recommends not to multiply.

goodside 6y ago
Agree completely, but a lack of direct observation isn’t the only evidence we have, at least in principle. If you had an unimaginably powerful computer that could run simulations to determine whether life could form for other values of fundamental constants, the answer would say something about the plausibility of an anthropic explanation for their values. If it turns out that any slight adjustment makes life (of any form, however alien) impossible, anthropic explanations are more likely. If it turns out that any choice of constants produces some form of life, anthropic explanations are less likely. We can’t run this simulation, but we can make at least weak inferences about what parts of the parameter space preclude life. More speculatively, as we’ve gathered more observation, we’ve repeatedly found a world consistent with the theory, “Things could be different; your local conditions are unrepresentative; there was a de facto parameter sweep and you’re in an odd corner of it.” Humans are in a very specific place with respect to their surroundings on many, many scales. Admittedly, though, not on the very largest scales we can observe. The cosmos does appear homogenous eventually. Anthropic cosmology is tantamount to the claim that this homogeneity isn’t the end of the story, and that on some “larger” scale (which might not correspond literally to spatial position), the non-homogeneity resumes and explains why our region is the way it is. If there were some a priori theoretical reason to suppose that constants actually do vary, just so slowly that they appear constant within any given Hubble volume, it would add credence to the explanation that we’re just once again in an odd part of a parameter sweep.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  Isn't the issue there verifying that our simulations of other values are accurate? For example within a certain range of values Newton's law of motion hold but outside of that they don't. We can simulate outside of that range as if they do but luckily can observe that those simulations don't hold experimentally.

srl 6y ago

I pretty much agree. Anthropic reasoning is very strong in some circumstances. If we can directly observe some planet, and see that there's no life on it, then it's pretty easy to answer the question "why are we on this world instead of that world?" The difficult case is the one where direct observation isn't possible. The neutron star example is good: they exist in our universe, but who has strong evidence or argument that there's no exotic life in/on the crust?

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

Is that really the case? Or rather caused by our current limits of observation?