Deorum and I are correct. Stu Pidasso is wrong. However, it turns out he may have just been messing around.

My understanding of multiverse is many universes each with their own big bangs(and consequently their own distinct space/time continuums) existing in a bulk.

Susskinds landscape seems to imply that spacetime is continuous accross the "megaverse" but its properties differ in different locals.

Ah - my faith is restored (and I'm going to keep my virtual bet). You'll get over it. Your 'rethinking' is just regressing to the commonsense and wrong justification people usually provide (albeit dressed up in slightly more sophisticated language).

To see it's wrong - write out the options. The door's behind A, B or C (three options). Now you pick one (randomly or algorithmically). Monty thinks for a while and opens a door (if you picked correct he has a choice, otherwise his decision is forced). Should you switch or shouldnt you in each of the three situations? Twice you should. Once you shouldnt.

I blame this video for the inspiration of my line of thought tonight:

Delayed choice quantum erasure

That is not really how I interpret what he is saying. But I haven't read his book which probably gives all the details

They anthropic ones think it looks tuned, what are you talking about?

Max is right, Ive read the books.

Also why can't the sciences resolve the argument as to whether some physical constants look tuned or not? I don't mean prove a multiverse and derive tuning, I mean from present information.

( I think Susskind won this debate and most of the reservations are because of the bad name anthropic theories got from religious groups in previous historical usage. )

I think there is a pretty clear line between confirmed and tested physics and very reasonable speculation based on math. Answering whether there is fine tuning or not requires us to guess about the reasonable but speculative theories. I agree that right now it is not possible to beat Susskind in a debate about this right now, but that could change in the future.

There is a difference between agreeing that if some things were slightly different there would be a much different universe and claiming that we have reason to believe that those things should be something other than what we observe.

The OP was meant to be a dig at the ridiculous conclusion drawn by proponents of anthropic arguments.

No problem here. I think it is a good idea to do this.

There is no claim that they should be other then they are.

The claim is that there needs to be an explanation for the fine balance. ( If there is no fine balance: stop)

If we include multiple universes:

The explanation could be Lee Smolin's black hole evolution
( most think it can't work)
or it can be the Susskind M-theory Landscape.( Hawking now too)

If we don't have multiple universes:

Then AFIK there is no good non-multiverse explanation for the fine balance and it is an interesting area to do further work since to me it would be the BIGGEST MYSTERY IN ALL OF SCIENCE.

D.

Sigh. I get tired of repeating this. Saying that it is a mystery that 'everything aligned perfectly' is placing some sort of existential importance on this particular 'permutation.'

Lets say for the sake of argument that some parameter W ( in our made up standard model) is equal to say 0.53000000001.

Lets say that the W value 0.53000000001 is derived exactly from the mass of a particle the faketron ( in our made up model)

Lets say that W, at the very large scale determines the time before our universe collapses back to a singularity.
If W < .53000000000 the universe collapses in a nanosecond. Similarly if it is any larger by a very small amount the universe would collapse in a nanosecond, before developing atoms, chemistry etc,.

Don't we have to question what is the symmetry or mechanism with atomic Faketron mass exactly right to have this macroscopic effect?
Now it can be resolved many different ways but "It just IS" doesn't cut it.

Questioning to find out how it works is fine. I am all for that. Saying that it is existentially special simply because it produces something we like is ridiculous.

bump