As is, this is wrong. Take out 'sensible' and it becomes correct but entirely irrelevant.

No you don't, because you clearly do not understand what my argument is. It is not that the constants being locked is the default position. That is merely an alternate option I suggested to illustrate why your claim is absurd. I am not making a positive claim about whether or not the universe appears fine tuned. You are. My argument is that your position is unjustified.

Well, no, that the constants are fundamentally locked would be just one way of justifying that claim. Of course, I am not advocating that claim.

This undermines your entire position. If you now just want to make the claim, 'if the constants can be changed then this is how the universe could look if it were fine tuned for carbon based life' then I agree. But,

1) This is not what you began arguing, and

2) This is an utterly useless statement.

Fail #2.

I don't think anyone will disagree with the fact that the universe APPEARS to be fine tuned. But in the eyes of us humans alone. This is based on the fact that the majority of people on earth have the idea inside their head that our life on earth here is significant. While it is infact coincidental (distance to the sun is good, gravity, etc etc, all coincidental factors!). I like to use this example a lot, but think about putting all the parts of a clock in a box, shake it around and when you open it you see a working ticking clock. This is why we exist.

life is fine tuned to the universe, which is why the universe appears to us to be fine tuned. this isn't rocket science.

The universe isn't necessarily fine tuned to humans....it is fine tuned toward the rise of carbon based life. You can't say that the ability for carbon base life to arise was something that "evolved".

We don't KNOW if it even has the appearance of fine tuning because we can't derive any of the parameters that are supposed to be fine tuned. Also the notion that it is fine tuned specifically for life is not at all supported. The cosmological is a factor of 10 lower than what is needed just for life. The Higgs mass also could be much, much higher and life could still exist.

Our existence is evidence of the appearance of the universe being fine-tuned.

Again, no. It doesn't seem like you realize that "fine tuning" has a very specific meaning in physics and you are not using it correctly at all. Or perhaps you do and just don't care. Either way pretty much everything you are saying is wrong.

Lol, if you keep up this pace of incorrect posting it will be a full time job to correct all of your errors

And these are the type of questions that we can't even begin to ask because we don't if various free parameters are independent or not. Once you fix the muon mass, the electron mass is potentially fully determined for example. Constants that appear to be fine tuned (in the sense that physicists use the term) does not mean this incredibly naive (and somewhat stupid) thing that you think it means.

You haven't really put forth much of an argument. Deorum did and I crushed it.

What do you think about this statement by Leonard Susskind...maybe you can correct his errors too:

- Interveiw with Lennard Susskind for New Scientist,17 December 2005

A natural explaination for the universe appearing to be fine tuned

Haha, at you thinking you crushed Deorum. In his last post he tried to explain some of the mistakes you made. This doesn't even come down to theism vs atheism, its just that you don't understand the state of physics and what is understood and what is very speculative. You are going to have find a local expert who is a theist because I don't see any way to explain it to you without just repeating what has been said.

I disagree with Susskind, and so do most experts IMO. I don't think you really understand what fine tuning is so my rebuttal to susskinds quote won't make any sense to you. If you read up and post some correct background info on what fine tuning is and why it is speculative from the start I'll tell you my opinions. But until then I see no point.

I would be interested in what you disagree with. The paragraph seems right to me.

Even formerly "Dreams of a Final Theory" Weinberg is in this camp.

First you have to post something which shows you understand what fine tunning means before Maxi will respond.

Paul Davies and Martin Rees would also agree that the universe has the appearance of being fine tuned. Its not some crack-pot creationist notion.

There seem to be (at least) two different uses of "fine tuning" ITT. One talks about nature itself being fine tuned for life. The other talks about descriptions of nature being fined tuned to match what they describe.

I mean in the sense Susskind has explained for instance:
from an interview (that is also linked above):

I should add that I have viewed about 100 lectures by Susskind ( Stanford series + others) and he has a lot of credibility with me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuning

For your sake, I'll give some of my opinions

I have a few non physics based statements and I'll get those out of the way. I think no matter what ever happens, there will be some IDiots who you can not convince, like there are in biology. I know that Susskind is saying that he doesn't think he will have any good arguments for them, but it is worth pointing out that no matter how good the arguments are there will be some who are opposed to it without understanding it. They may get smaller every decade and their average IQ might drop 10 points, but I don't think they will ever go away.

For Lenny's argument to work, you pretty much have to assume that paradigm shifts are over in physics. We are at the top of the mountain, and there are no game changing experimental or theoretical breakthroughs that are going to unseat KKLT and the multi vacuum theories. I don't see this as a given. I think experimental results or mathematical breakthroughs can recast previous results and a more focused version of string theory will give rise to new problems and at the same time perhaps not solve current problems but show that the questions are not the right questions. It is certainly possible that he is correct. You mentioned that Susskind has a good reputation in your eyes. He has a very, very goor reputation in my eyes but when you are talking about something like predicting what physics will look like in 50 years, even people as good as Susskind are likely to be wrong. Imagine what Feynman or Gell-Man would have said in 1950 about the physics of 2000. There wouldn't be anything remotely correct.

Do you see that that is not how you are using it?

That's one, and then there is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe

So the argument is basically...

The universe allows for the kind of life that we are a part of.
If the universe had a different set of physics, life might have significantly different properties, or might not exist.
Therefore, we must all have an invisible, formless daddy outside observation that did it all and cares about us?

Let's assume that your premises are correct....where does that get you? As far as I can tell, all that allows you to do is deduce that the universe allows for life, not that it is particularly interested in it, or that life is the main, or even an important by product in a part of some greater cosmic purpose.

This is supported by the fact that it took modern humans some 13 billion years to evolve, and some 4 billion years to evolve after Earth had already formed. If the universe is fine tuned for humans, why did it need to take 13 billion years for them to form? That seems like an incredibly slow process filled with immense suffering for the previous generations that didn't have things like air conditioning, heating, clean water, or TV dinners.

For some reason I don't think starving neanderthals stalking animals in the blazing desert in order to eat a small amount of uncooked meat and then eventually dying do not share your idea that things in the universe are set up particularly well for humans to thrive.

And how about replying to the actual OP of this thread?

God's characteristics, almost always portrayed as being perfect in every way, would be the ultimate argument for a fine tuning. Why do you think that the universe needs god, but god, something infinitely more grand and infinitely more "fine tuned" for perfection, does not need some kind of explanation?

It's clear that all you do here is fantasize.

You are not special. But as demonstrated in earlier threads with you, you cannot get over the fantasy that you are. This is what keeps you from seeing reality.

Its clear that you don't understand Susskind's position. It doesn't require any paradigm shift. All he is saying is that the universe is a very very very big place and the value of certain constants will differ on locality. Same old theories still apply....same paradigm applies.

I do not think you actually think this but that you are just a bit frustrated. But let us try another approach to help clarify your mistakes. Your argument takes the form,

- If the universe appears fine tuned then it would have these features.
- It has these features.
- Therefore, the universe is fine tuned.

You are committing a logical fallacy here called affirming the consequent. Specifically,

- If P then Q.
- Q.
- Therefore, P.

This is logically invalid because P does not necessarily follow from Q even if Q necessarily follow from P. The 'fixed values' I was suggesting is an instance of that. The universe cannot appear fine tuned if the concept of fine fining does not make sense. This is why you must first demonstrate that fine tuning makes sense before you can claim that the universe appears fine tuned. You are making the positive claim. The onus is on you to ensure it makes sense in the first place.

Lol, add comprehending basic english to your "to do" list.

Max, my physics training was both basic and a couple of decades ago. String theory was 'the next big thing' or 'the most recent delusion' depending on who you spoke to, so I don't really know anything about it. At the time, as far as I was aware, they couldn't actually do any calculations nor make any predictions - it was more along the lines of "this would be a mathematically neat way to structure the universe...maybe it's like that".

Are you able to give a layman account of how things have progressed? Has it actually made any concrete predictions (or have any of the various versions)? Does it reduce/increase or otherwise affect the number of 'fundamental constants' or place any meaningful restrictions on them?

Again I have done a dangerously small amount of physics - enough to recognise words without actually understanding much of it. I'd appreciate your perspective though, even if it's speculative or outside your usual field (what is that, btw - I always assumed it was cosmology because that's what we usually talk about, I guess).

There have not been any clean, straightforward predictions. 2 general ones are supersymmetry and extra dimensions. The problem is that theory doesn't tell us how big the extra dimensions are or how heavy super partners should be, so it is sort of unfalsifiable in a sense right now. IMO, a ton of progress has been made, the Maldacena conjecture and math topics like mirror symmetry are very active and fruitful areas. But while this progress is being made it seems like we find more and more things that we need to know so the general feeling is that we are not anywhere near finishing string theory anytime soon. If you were in a physics department in the late 80s or early 9os, people would have felt like they were alot closer even though it turned out that they weren't.