Here's the thing. I think the fine-tuning argument tries to grab persuasive power implicitly by way of a kind of psychological trick. A magician's illusion built on the smoke and mirrors of this "Range" idea.

If it had been found that the parameters had to be exactly as they are for life as we know it to form the fine-tuning argument would look like this:

"It's unlikely that the parameters of our universe were the result of chance because they needed to be exactly as they are for life as we know it to have formed."


Now, that argument has some persuasive punch based on our sense of serendipity at our Universe - from all evidence the one and only - happening to be such that it provides us with our existence. It's the punch that counter arguments of anthropic bias address.

But what that argument does not do is carry persuasive punch based on a sense of knowing something about a probability distribution on a parameter space for the prior probability of our Universe. That argument gives a sense that according to the information we have available the only such probability space we can justify is the discrete one which carries a prior probability of 1 for our Universe.

So the narrowest of ranges carries little persuasive punch when according to the spirit of fine-tuning it should carry more punch than a wider range.

However, look what happens when the range is widened. We get the fine-tuning argument as now presented:


"It's unlikely that the parameters of our universe were the result of chance Because they must have fallen within a narrow range for life as we know it to have formed."

Like a magician's illusion this "narrow range" conjures in our minds for n parameters an n-dimension parameter space on which there must be some probability distribution for which a "narrow range" has small probability. It's a psychological trick that grabs persuasive power based on zero evidence and parlays it with our sense of serendipity at the hospitality of our Universe.

The truth is that regardless of talk about a "narrow range", the only parameter probability function we can justify for the prior probability of our universe is the discrete one which places a probability of 1 on the parameters being exactly as they actually are.

PairTheBoard

I read this exchange: That's great that you managed to find something to criticize in mrmr. I should care why?

As I suggested long ago and suspected before that, you and I don't seem to have any substantive disagreement on this that you are capable of articulating. We both agree the universe has the descriptive property. We both agree that the FTA is weak and incomplete at coming to believe the causal property is likely. We both agree the toy universe has the descriptive property. We both agree that it is likewise incomplete to claim the toy universe has the causal property. Your framing (and its superior wording by PTB) is fully endorsed by me. So what exactly is this disagreement about?

This seems like vintage aaron, trying to find something - anything - to nitpick, no matter how terribly, while being terribly resistant to advancing a conversation and needing repeated queries to determine even the most basic information like whether this is an argument you even find to be persuasive. If pwning your pathetic attempts to find something to disagree with wasn't just.so.much.fun you really would be a genuinely terrible person to converse with.


For clarity's sake, recall how I carefully delineated between the descriptive and causal properties. When I first asked about the toy universe this delineation hadn't occurred, and I think confused you terribly. As I have since made very clear and asked many times, I was asking about the descriptive property. So "possibly" is a terrible answer to something built into the universe as construction. It is an objective "yes". Remember, the point of such examples is to flush out definitions, and I'd argue that this was useful in helping us see that we both had indeed the same definition (oh sorry, description, in your mind) and that there is no disagreement you can articulate.

And hopefully you can now see that now I have never been casting the argument as a formal deduction. Indeed this seems like a very silly supposition on your part given how we haven't even begun to discuss the types of ways people argue from the descriptive to the causal property being likely.



I would have thought that at some point in your physics degree you would have figured out what I figured out, as I did in mine, what it means for a theory to be consistent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistency. If energy has two different units then we have an obvious contradiction and our theory is not consistent (your made up example). Thankfully, I never proposed any contradictions, as explained (again) here:


Just lol. Stop embarrassing yourself. Never - not once - have I suggested making a contradiction between Newtonian physics and GR. You can either just use the Newtonian model of the universe - ya know, the one used for hundreds of years before Einstein and studied by every physics student today. Or you can use the GR model which reduces to Newtonian physics, where of course - of course - duh - duh - ****ing duh - that means if you change gravity you change GR, a theory about gravity, too.

But no, at no point have I ever suggested anything remotely close to a contradiction between the too. Wow.

The units aren't wrong though. As you noted the units on G changes. And then, in the Newtonian model of the universe (no, for the slow learners, not the GR model, if you want to worry about that obviously you have to change that too) you can't name a single contradiction with the units. Energy has the same units it has always had.

Turned out pretty well though, didn't it. Nonetheless, the point that there is a rich history of people trying slightly different structures for models of the universe remains entirely untouched by you. You seem to have a strange objection to considering anything outside of changing empirical constants. Very strange and very limiting for someone who is supposed to know something about physics.

The discussion above describes the psychology of the "narrow range" conjuring a mistaken impression of there being a prior probability space by which the probability of our universe was small. In other words, If our universe came about by chance there was a small prior probability for its doing so.

However, that's not exactly what the fine-tuning argument ends up with. Instead, based on that impression it argues that it is therefore unlikely our universe did come about by chance. That's different. It raises the question, "if not by chance then how?". That's a question physicalists are uncomfortable with and supernaturalists consider an open door.

But is that conclusion the only reasonable one? I don't think it is and for a physicalist I don't think it's even the most reasonable one. I think Sklansky alluded to an alternative conclusion and mrmr has been dancing around it.

*If* you buy the "narrow range" (imo mistaken) impression that if our universe came about by chance there was a small prior probability for its doing so *Then* it reasonably follows that it's unlikely our universe was the one and only universe to have formed according to that prior probability. It still formed by chance and the fact it supports life is countered by anthropic bias. Thus the fine-tuning argument argues at least equally well for multiple universes.

Of course I don't buy any of this because I don't buy the impression of a prior probability space conjured by the "narrow range" language.


PairTheBoard

I don't think it's the only reasonable one, either. Granting the deck of cards analogy is sufficient, as there's never a claim that it's totally unreasonable to get a straight flush.

This is an error. Strip away the extra language and it just says "If the universe happened by chance then lots of universes happened by chance." You're confusing the assignment of a prior probability with the assertion that you have multiple random variables drawn from the same distribution.

It would be like arguing that if you deal a straight flush that you must have dealt some other hand before it.

Assigning prior probabilities in the absence of multiple observations (information about previous random variables drawn from the same sample space). The only mathematically justified assumption is to assume that the observed quantity is the only possible value of the random variable.

For example, if X is a random variable and we get X = x as the only observation, the only thing that can be completely justifiably claimed about as the prior probability is that P(X = x) = 1.

And so if you want to draw the line there and assert that nothing can be known, there's no real counterargument to that. But this assumes that nothing at all can be learned about the nature of X other than observations about other random variables from the same distribution. And this is where we part ways with the blind formal mathematical model.

So we look for something to use to try to understand the universe. And then what we learn from the universe we can try to apply to the underlying question.

Let's turn this around for a bit. Let's say that we found life was incredibly robust relative to changes in the physical parameters. In fact, you have to be off by several orders of magnitude before anything remotely "different" happens. Notice that this observation would not imply multiple universes, nor does it imply that life is special with regards to this particular change of parameters. There could be no fine-tuning argument in this situation.

I don't know why you should care. You're the one who was wondering what was going on. You didn't bother reading the thread, so you asked. But now that you've asked, you're wondering why you should care?

I told you that I wasn't arguing that point.

What part about this was so confusing?

Gee... it's not like I stated anything earlier in the conversation that addressed that point. It's not like I've noted the limitations of the fine-tuning argument and have been quick to point out different types of flaws in it throughout the thread (well, before you entered -- since you've entered there's been very little reason to expand those comments).

No, it's not.

I've been clear that "definition" isn't helpful here in the same sense that defining "design" isn't helpful. The successful part of the argument doesn't proceed in the manner you've continued to suggest. That you think it does and that I haven't articulated reasons why it doesn't work that way is probably due to a lack of reading comprehension.

Right... because even though you've changed the units of the fundamental constant in one equation to avoid contradiction, you proposed NOTHING to deal with the fact that changing the units in one equation changes the units in ALL the equations, and those equations are now out of whack.

I tried to show you this with the simple example of looking at the dimensional analysis of E = mc^3 and E = 1/2*mv^2. If you change one equation in an arbitrary way, your units become inconsistent across other equations. Sticking with the gravitational constant, you got it to work with the Newtonian equation, but in order to get consistency you've got to fix all the other equations, because now everywhere that G shows up, your units will be off.

If you still don't understand after all of this, then I don't really know what else I can say to you to help you to understand. Arbitrary changes to the physics formulas have much larger consequences than you seem capable of realizing.

Short of using a false equation (say, 1 = 0), it's not really a sensible thing to argue about "consistency" of equations when you only have one equation under consideration. That's why I asked you what you meant because trying to argue "MY ONE EQUATION IS CONSISTENT" is really not an interesting statement about consistency.

Changing the units of G creates inconsistencies in other equations that use G. It's that simple and obvious.

You would notice that all of the slightly different structures did things like MAINTAIN CONSISTENCY with existing formulas and empirical data. If you knew something about physics, you would know that proposed alternative models DO NOT propose changes to the units of the fundamental constants except for the most basic toy models (in which the units are often just ignored anyway since the purpose of the toy model isn't really to propose a viable alternative model of physics but done for other illustrative purposes).

But please, keep pretending like you know something about physics. It's entertaining.

It is always telling what you ignore, namely the paragraph in back to back posts outlining how aside from the fringe minutia mentioned below, there doesn't actually seem to be any disagreement. You have been fervently insisting I am forcing some framing that is somehow different...but have utterly failed to articulate what the difference is. You alluded that how your positions on this weak and incomplete argument differed from mine was found in mrmr's exchange so I asked about it, but it appears this is not the case. My guess is that you will either ignore this paragraph or find some other way not to avoid clearly articulating what this disagreement you imagine actually is.

Wat. In a universe where a tiny percent change in a fundamental parameter stops life - nay, atoms! - from forming you don't think it satisfies the descriptive property that changing fundamental parameters prevent life? How odd.



Again, the two are very different. For the descriptive property - that small changes in fundamental parameters make life impossible - this is far more objective than design is. Defining design is admittedly pretty hard, but one can actually plug in numbers into physics equations and make predictions about the universe and seeing how these changes make physics that prevents life as we know it.


Uhh...Newtonian mechanics is not just one equation, but regardless a theory is consistent if it doesn't have any contradictions so the theory which would still be satisfied even if it was just one equation.



Lol. Just lol. I don't know how many times I can repeat that I am absolutely not and never have proposed a model of the universe that isn't consistent. How you are still confused by this point is beyond me. Like do you really not get that one can consider Newtonian mechanics as a model of the universe and play around with that? If you want to talk about GR that's fine too, and obviously if one changes gravity one has to change GR. The only way you get a contradiction would be if you want to consider both, but only change NM and not GR. I didn't do that. You made that up. Which, frankly, is just stupid.



Newtonian mechanics is hardly a toy model, but regardless, if I am going to change how gravity works, it shouldn't be the least bit surprising that the gravitational constant changes. In the Newtonian model, can you actually articulate a single reason why gravity could not be as I suggested? And no, "you would have to change GR too" isn't an answer.

Yup. Time to take that degree off the wall, you sure showed me.

If you change "must" to probably are you OK with the statement?

Meh. I get lazy sometimes and don't want to do point-by-point to every single post you make when it's all the same thing.

The difference is that you're trying to frame things via "definition" which locks in language and concepts that are either too rigid or insufficient.

Nah. It's just conflation of concepts. Either that, or it's exactly the trivial example I called it out to be at the very beginning. You create an example in which there's no meaningful commentary that could be made, you highlight AND affirm that there's nothing that can be said, and now you're trying to play games with the language to create commentary from it.

But that's not fine-tuning. The numbers themselves don't argue the fine-tuning. Just as a royal flush can be fine-tuned (stacked the deck) or chance (it was a legitimately shuffled deck), you cannot defined fine-tuned in a declarative manner.

Right. No contradictions unless you wave your hands and pretend like everything works out the way it needs to. Yes, you can have an entirely consistent Newtonian theory of gravity, but it would be inconsistent with the larger theory of gravity. That makes it an inconsistent theory. It's not any more complicated than that. Sure, just change this one equation and completely rewrite physics in a fundamental way and of course there will be no problems at all.

You can't just close your eyes to the rest of physics and pretend like this one modification has no consequences. And you've proposed no way of resolving the conflict beyond just pretending like it could be done. (Well, I guess you can close your eyes because that's what you've been doing for a while now.)

Why limit yourself to mucking around with exponents? Why not take logs or exponentials of the variables (changing their unit structure so that you're dealing with pure numbers, of course)?

The problem with the type of arbitrary you describe is that it's too arbitrary to be meaningful. It requires a VAST number of completely arbitrary changes that may or may not be successful when applied across the theories. However, changing the values of the constants is something that we can do (and in fact is done often -- in theoretical calculations, the substitution c=1 is often used, along with several other physical constants).

As I said, you're free to propose whatever you want. It may not look anything like what people who do physics actually do (except for toy models in which we basically ignore the units anyway), such as proposing that the units of the fundamental constants of the universe ought to be changed for arbitrary reasons.

Only in the sense that if you are dealing from a deck of cards it's probably not the hand you've dealt. That observation has more to do with what I know about decks of cards and people dealing them than anything pertaining to the dealt hand itself.

No. You need to reread it. The extra language includes the assumption that you buy the impression generated by "narrow range" of there being a prior probability space for which that narrow range has small probability. I'm making the case that's the unspoken implicit impression the fine-tuning argument depends on. If you don't buy that unwarranted assumption then we are evidently in agreement as you explain below.


That's exactly the conclusion I came to as well. If you do that you are essentially talking about a Necessary Universe whereby the fine-tuning argument loses all force.


I'm not saying that nothing can be learned about the nature of X. If the science is correct we have learned something about the nature of X. We have learned that it has a narrow range for an interesting property of our Universe. What I'm saying is knowing that does not tell us that it's "unlikely our Universe came about by chance." And I'm also saying that mistaken conclusion only seems to carry force because of the mistaken impression about prior probabilities conjured by the "narrow range" language.


This merely reinforces by contention that it's the mistaken impression of prior probabilities conjured by the "narrow range" language that provides the fine-tuning argument with its bogus persuasive force. If you change that to a "Wide Range" the argument loses its bogus force because that language does not conjure the same mistaken impression.



Edit:
What you end up with when boiled down is the following Fine-Tuning contention:

Our Universe formed with probability 1 but it's unlikely it did so by chance.

That's nonsense.



PairTheBoard

This is fine, but what isn't fine is when you have a consistent pattern of ignoring the key point. While you have kept trying to make it appear like we have some big substantive disagreement, we really don't. You seem to agree precisely with me that the universe does have the descriptive property, but that the arguments to conclude the causal property from this are weak and incomplete. Oh there is the odd semantic quibble on the side like whether something is definition vs a description, or whether I'm allowed to consider a Newtonian model of the universe separately from the GR one, but on the substance we are - appearances not withstanding - in complete agreement.




Well I'm using the exact same quote you used which claims that (in my rewording) that if a universe has the descriptive property the causal property is likely. The substance is the same. The only difference is that you seem to object to the idea that you have actually given a definition of the descriptive property.

I'm hardly alone in this, btw. Here is the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe

The basic descriptive property is the same as yours, but notice how it is phrased: as a definition of a fine tuned universe. One absolutely can make such a definition. I've called it UM (just to keep it super simple for you). So we can say that our universe and my toy universe are fine-tuned universes. This isn't talking about whether it is intentional or likely to have come from chance or any other such things. It is perfectly fine to make that argument - remember, I'm embracing exactly yours - and call it the "fine tuning argument" or FTA, but we undoubtably have a well defined descriptive property an order of magnitude more objective than any attempts to describe a descriptive property of design.

The comparison with the teleological argument might be useful here to get you past your (fairly basic) sticking point. For this, there is likewise a descriptive property (the universe shows evidence of design) that points towards a causal property (a designer). Here we have a descriptive property (small changes make life impossible) that points towards a causal property (by chance is unlikely). The important difference between the two is that the descriptive properties are rather unequal in their objectiveness. It is very hard to argue the universe shows evidence of design, or what that even means. It is far easier to define the property that changing fundamental constants a bit makes life impossible and doable for physicists to do those computations and objectively say that yes the property is satisfied or not.



Remember, the point is to flush out a good definition. It was AFTER providing the example that you created a definition which - I agree - trivially satisfies the descriptive property. What is curious is why you seem to still be confused about it.


You keep confusing the descriptive and causal properties. You got mad at me saying you were using "fine tuned" synonymously with "intended" but this seems to be effectively what you are doing. As in, your judgement of whether a royal flush is fine tuned or not is dependent on whether it was intended. As I quoted above, it is entirely standard to refer to "fine tuned" as a descriptive property without any mention of intent or anything like it. We already have a word for "intented"...it's intended! Something being fine tuned ought to refer (as in the wikiquote) to the descriptive property. If you want to give a fine tuning argument that leads from the descriptive to the causal that is fine, but you agree the argument doesn't work for that.



Amazing how stubbornly moronic you can be. For the 100th time, it is entirely fine to just consider the Newtonian model of the universe. That's what people did for hundreds of years. But for illustrating a simple point, it is absolutely fine to do so in the vastly simpler to express ITT Newtonian model of the universe. Especially because hey, if you DO want to consider GR well that would be entirely fine too! One can still change how gravity works and try writing out new GR equations for that. It's just I didn't do that, working entirely within a Newtonian model of the universe not a GR one. The only way you could possibly get me to be making a contradiction is if I was using the GR model but only changed what happened in the newtonian approximation. Which I didn't do.

The funniest part is that I asked you a long time ago why it could not be that gravity has 1/r^3 dependency. Your only answer to date is "you'd have to change GR too". Lol. Duh. No **** sherlock. But that doesn't actually answer the question.

But you also know that people are who deal out two sixes and KQ7 won't tell you about it.

You guys really need to read that Tegmark book. He examines these issues (and other that would make for good threads) in depth.

Not in any formally deduced sense, no. But I've never claimed that it did that.

Be careful: Any particular event that is known to have happened has probability 1 (because we know for certain that it happened).

But setting that aside, using a "mathematically strict" Bayesian updating isn't a logical necessity. That is, rationality does not demand that you take your prior based only on previous results. Other information can be used to establish priors.

Let's think about a foot race between A and B. They've run it 20 times and A has beat B every time. But in the next race I'm going to bet on B to win because I have come to know that A injured himself between races. The strict Bayesian updating method virtually demands that you bet on A. But even without knowing any further results, you can adjust your priors.

As with all mathematical models, we choose the model. We choose what information is put into the model and we choose what information is left out. If you take your prior probability in the strict Bayesian updating sense, then there's no randomness in the universe, and if there happened to be another universe, you would expect it to be exactly identical to ours (at least in the sense of the value of the fundamental constants).

This has been brought up already.

Also, see

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6551

Notice the scare quotes. It's not that Paul Davies really accepts the definition of fine-tuning. My position expresses the exact same hesitancy. If you narrowly define fine-tuning to be this thing that we have to use scare quotes around to make sure we let everyone know we mean something else, there's probably something more to it.

I understand that this is your desire. I don't think a good definition is forthcoming.

Synonymous is too strong of a word. But it does carry some connotations of intention. I did say that it depends on the context, and that seems to me to be the best framing. In the context of 10^1000 deals, a royal flush is nothing. In the context of 1 deal, a royal flush is interesting. One suggests fine-tuning (it was more than just chance) and the other does not. I stop short of calling it intention because failure to shuffle a brand new deck of cards and dealing out a straight flush off the first 5 could not possibly be called intention. But I would consider it to be fine-tuning.

Again, there are multiple levels of arbitrary. And yours is on the higher end of arbitrary. Why not just propose that in this other universe there isn't even a GR that you need to reconcile with? In order to maintain a sense of consistency with physics as we understand it, the changing of physical constants is a reasonable place to tweak things. Changing exponents randomly is not.

All this just confirms my contention that the "narrow range" language only provides persuasive force to the fine-tuning argument because it implicitly conjures in our minds (note: not a deduction) the unspoken image for n-parameters of an n-dimensional parameter space on which there is some prior probability distribution for which the "narrow range" has a small probability.

You are playing both sides of the street by trying to both hide this aspect to the heuristic as well as supporting it.


PairTheBoard

The analogy to viewing a Royal Flush poker hand is more apt when it includes the stipulation of our knowing that the only poker hand we have the capacity to view is a Royal Flush.


PairTheBoard

Thankfully you provided a poorly worded but perfectly satisfactory one that defined the descriptive property adequately. Or we can use the wikiquote you completely ignored. They key difference there - since the descriptive property was just a rephrasing of your own - is that the concept of a fine tuned universe WAS defined as a purely descriptive property. We call a universe fine tuned for life if small changes in its fundamental properties prevent life from forming. That is a perfectly fine definition, and outside of specifying what is meant by "small" and some subjectivity in the "fundamental" it is even a fairly objective definition that we can go out and test and conclude - as you agreed - that the universe is fine tuned according to this definition. Contrast this terminology with what you use here:

You just aren't using the word anything remotely like the wikiquote. There, fine tuned was a descriptive property. For you, you are using fine tuned if you know the causal property, that it was "more than just chance". This continued confusion of yours I tried to resolve when I carefully delineated between UM and AW, the descriptive and causal properties. What is effectively going on here is that the wiki article is defining "fine tuned" as the descriptive property UM (which is how I would have used it) and you are defining "fine tuned" as the causal property AW. Using the wiki definition, the FTA would read "If a universe is fine tuned then it is unlikely it happened by chance". I suppose if you want to insist that you need both UM and AW (or maybe just AW? it isn't clear) before you can call something fine tuned that's fine - you can define...err...describe things how you want - but it isn't at all standard.

Meh. This just shifts the agent of interionality from the card dealer to the card manufacturer which I don't think is going to be workable path for you to try and delineate your concept from that of intention.

This is a hilarious attempt to selectively quote somebody and use the fact that they put quotes around the key word to read it as them agreeing with you when there is no indication that is actually the case. Just lol. This is the full statement:
Notice how there are no "scare quotes" around fine tuned in the latter sentences. Indeed, his objection isn't - as you seem to believe - that he doesn't accept the definition of fine tuning, merely that he thinks the fine tuning is going on at the level of the building blocks for life, not for life itself. There is nothing in here that indicates he disagrees with the idea of defining fine-tuning as a descriptive property. Nothing to indicate he agrees with you that fine tuning depends on knowing that someone intended it, or that it was not the result of chance. He is in complete agreement with me on the framing that we have this descriptive property of the universe we call fine tuning and indeed he thinks the universe IS fine tuned for the build blocks and environments life requires.



Um...you get that proposing a Newtonian model of the universe means there isn't a GR around to reconcile with? NM is a much simpler to understand (hence why I used it) model of the universe. GR is another more complicated one, that happens to reduce to NM in the classical limit. This is basic stuff. Just lol that you still think there was anything at all to your laughably vacuous objection of "but but but you have to change GR too!!!!"

To arbitrary for what? What is the problem with arbitrary here when asking questions like "why is the universe the way it is and not some other way"? We are already considering alternate models of the universe. Yet you want to restrict attention to ONLY alternate models that change constants and nothing else, no added terms, no changing structure. Gravity has to work exactly as it does in our universe, just maybe a tiny bit stronger or weaker, but we can't hypothesize that it might act in a fundamentally different way. Why not? While ironically there are actually some simple geometric reasons I presumed you would have figured out but apparently this is beyond you for why the Newtonian era physicist might have guessed 1/r^2 dependency and not 1/r^3 dependency, it seems an entirely reasonable question to ask why gravity operates this way, and what would happen if it operated differently. If you want to call that arbitrary, well, okay, I suppose it is, but so what?

History is replete with countless examples of different models of the universe. There is a rich tradition of playing around with equations to see what they predict and how those predictions work with our observations and so forth. There isn't just one and only one model of the universe we have ever come up. Never sat in on a string theory colloquium during your degree? It's all kinds of madness. Why you insist that the only models of the universe we are allowed to consider is the standard one with variable constants is beyond me.

This is exactly what I think every time I read something from this thread.

The only hand we have the capacity to view directly? Sure. But the only hand that we can reasonably consider as a reasonable possibility... not so clear.

"Standard"? By whose measure? I'd use scare quotes in the exact same way that it appears in actual publications:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action...73550403001514

Or I would use something that's a bit more like this one that comes from a philosophy of religion website:

http://www.philosophyofreligion.info...m-fine-tuning/

In each case, I think that this perspective is probably better than what's provided from wikipedia that is referenced to a TalkOrigins page:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI301.html

So I think I have a sufficiently strong reason to believe that the more "definitional approach" is probably an error.

Do you think that the card manufacturer intended for a straight flush to be dealt? Or that the dealer who didn't shuffle intended to deal a straight flush? This seems to be a tenuous use of "intention" at best.

I read that more as a desire to not have to use scare quotes throughout an entire paper. By establishing it from the beginning, there's no reason to do it every single time. This is an extremely common practice.


Ummmmm.... not really. Here's the full quote:

He's not really describing his argument, but what the "fine-tuned" argument (scare quotes intentional) argues according to his analysis of it. And then the purpose of his article to propose a different type of analysis, regarding biophilic universes as a better means of explaining life (what he calls a "life principle.") So I disagree on your understanding of his perspective.

I also suggest that you do more than tie yourself to wikipedia as your support system. Seriously.

So I'm right that you did want to basically propose a universe in which there was no GR to reconcile with. Because surely ignoring existing models is not a completely arbitrary way of doing things and completely unreflective of how the field of physics advances. Proposing new theories with random changes to (edit: the units of) fundamental constants is not how physics is done. Sorry.

Because that's too arbitrary of a way to change the universe. It loses far too much of the understandable structure of the universe. You completely lose the existing coherence between models and have to implicitly suppose models that look nothing like our current ones.

At least you're willing to admit it. As I said, you can propose universes that don't even follow mathematical laws at all. But you stopped short of that. Why?

You would notice if you understood those lectures that it's not just proposing of universes by arbitrary changes, but that there is an attempt to reconcile calculations with existing models and predictions, first. And then after that's established (and this is the part where string theory is struggling) is to try to predict new observations. But the first step is always to reconcile with what's known.

Certainly you can consider other possible poker hands. You can consider the space of permutations on a deck of 52 cards. You can consider what seems like a natural probability function on that space of permutations, e.g. Each equally likely. And so you can consider under that probability function there is a small probability for a Royal Flush to be situated for your view.

But what heuristic can you infer based on those considerations when realizing you have no idea of the circumstances under which the Royal Flush you have in your view got there? Would you suggest the inference that it's unlikely it got there by chance? What chance? The chance described by the probability function you decided to consider? Or might you suggest that some other probability function on the space of deck permutations is more likely? Or might you suggest the inference that the poker hand you have in view is one among many and happens to be a Royal Flush because that's the only poker hand you have the capacity to view?

Or might you suggest that no inference is reasonable about how the Royal Flush you have in view got there because you have no information about the circumstances under which it came into your view? Of course if you suggest this you will have to answer to an Aaron W who will accuse you of rejecting the principle of reevaluating when provided further considerations.

PairTheBoard

Would you consider the claim that other poker hands have 5 cards to be a reasonable inference? What can you infer from the fact that AKQJT is an identifiable sequence of some sort?

The analogy breaks when we consider that to even know or understand a pattern, we need to know something more than just the "raw" data itself.

Maybe life isn't actually an interesting pattern. We're just reading a pattern into noise. That's an entirely possible position to take. You can do that.

I understand that you want to claim that absolutely nothing can be known or recognized. But it seems that if we're somehow able to understand that AKQJT is a meaningful pattern in this deck of card (whatever it contains), then we were probably able to figure out something about the deck of cards.

I thought I covered that with this:
"Certainly you can consider other possible poker hands. You can consider the space of permutations on a deck of 52 cards. You can consider what seems like a natural probability function on that space of permutations, e.g. Each equally likely. And so you can consider under that probability function there is a small probability for a Royal Flush to be situated for your view."

To be explicit I intend "other possible poker hands" to include the fact that poker hands consist of 5 cards from a 52 card deck and the knowledge that in poker a Royal Flush is ranked highest among all poker hands. Yes, you do recognize that the AKQJT of spades you are viewing is one of 4 possible best poker hands. The rest of my post was under that assumption.







This doesn't seem to show much understanding of my post. Maybe you should read it again below.




PairTheBoard