Nice collection of coincidences and just right configurations that make our universe/existence possible. Strange that the article doesn't also point out that all of these coincidences are 100% inevitable, otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe them.
Yes, I was surprised to see that there is no mention of the Anthropic Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle), which describes exactly what you're saying.
Of course, other kinds of life are possible, which would require other "just right" conditions - but in that case, we'd all be living in that universe, marveling at those coincidences!
You're referring to the Anthropic principle, which is a hypothesis, not a law of nature.
It also says nothing on inevitability. These things could easily have just not occurred (knowing what we know) and then we wouldn't be here to observe them.
The causal arrow is important.
"Only universes capable producing/hosting conscious observers can be consciously observed from within them" seems like more than just a hypothesis to me.
That's not what GP says. The original post said " all universes must inevitably produce the conditions for intelligent life" which is not obviously true. The anthropic principle does not say that either.
Any mention of the anthropic principle w.r.t. the article is essentially screwing up the causality, as correctly stated ITT.
Yes, but parent said "the anthropic principle is a hypothesis", and I was replying to that.
A tautology, even
My understanding is that the principle is just the observation that our existence implies that a certain chain of events occurred in the past. That isn't the same thing as saying that the chain of events necessarily had to occur.
Yeah, it's basic conditional logic.
If humans, then <chain of events>
doesn't mean <chain of events> is guaranteed to occur. We haven't even been able to guarantee the existence of existence.
Anthropic principle is a law, because it is tautology: conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist.
The anthropic principle in its weak form isn't really a hypothesis - it's more of a methodological principle that warns us against unnecessary theories. This is best illustrated by the historical debate between Dirac and Dicke (who came up with this idea) about cosmic coincidences.
In 1937, Dirac noticed striking numerical relationships between fundamental physical constants and the age of the universe [1]. He proposed these couldn't be coincidental and suggested fundamental constants must vary with cosmic time. But Dicke (1961) showed that some of these "coincidences" weren't so mysterious: they were necessary conditions for our existence as observers [2]. The universe had to be old enough for heavy elements to form in stars, but not so old that all stars burned out. These constraints naturally explain some of the numerical relationships Dirac found, without requiring varying constants.
However, Dicke's argument has limits: it only works for coincidences necessary for intelligent life. It can't explain away "gratuitous coincidences" - numerical relationships that aren't required for our existence. This is particularly relevant because Dirac's work was actually part of a longer tradition - going back to Weyl in 1919 [1] - of physicists finding peculiar numerical relationships between physical constants.
While the article discusses coincidences that make our existence possible, we need to consider how to explain the other ones. Is it even feasible ? Let me give it a try.
If physical constants were "set" randomly, with their observability conditioned only by whether they allow intelligent life, we should expect to find both types of coincidences in our universe: the necessary ones that enable our existence, and gratuitous ones that just happened to come along for the ride in our universe's "roll of the dice".
This leads to a disturbing conclusion: for laws of physics to be discoverable by observers in a universe without a creator, they must contain misleading elements as a by-product of what allowed these observers to emerge. The universe seems to impose a double-bind on its observers - the very conditions that make it observable must also make it deceptive.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_large_numbers_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle#Anthropic_...
Here's a counterargument.
Let's say there are two possible coincidences, A and B, each with an independent one-in-a-million chance. Coincidence A is necessary for life to emerge, but B is irrelevant.
Now let's say there are a trillion universes, with random settings. Only one in a million universes have coincidence A, but those are all the universes with observers. All the observers see coincidence A.
Out of those million universes, we can expect to see only one universe with coincidence B. The vast majority of observers will only see the coincidence that allowed them to exist.
But how can you determine that you're not one in a million?
You can't, not for sure. But this does mean that we shouldn't expect to find gratuitous coincidences. Most likely, the apparent coincidences we observe in physics and cosmology will either be necessary, due to physical relationships we don't understand yet, or will be explainable by the anthropic principle.
Would being one in a million itself be a coincidence though, one which we couldn't differentiate from coincidences explainable by the anthropic principle? "Most likely" doesn't satisfy me.
It's easy to form conjectures, but there is a deep metaphysical problem when it comes to satisfactorily modeling a system from the inside. It's turtles all the way down [0]. Unless our universe is embedded within another system, and its configuration at least partially mirrors the configuration of the system it is embedded within [1], and this is recoverable, then we really just can't make many absolute claims about the nature of our universe's particular configuration.
[0] And the only way out is by solving the deepest metaphysical problems which physics has not been able to touch, such as, "Why is there anything at all?"
[1] An example might be the conservation of energy, or stationary action. If such principles were to hold even within a system our universe might be embedded in, we could start to narrow down a few things and maybe uncover some suprauniversal inevitabilities. The challenge is proving that without observing the universe from the vantage point of a host system, which would really mean proving the inevitability of such principles in any system of sufficient complexity.
Coincidences are possible, the question is what conditional probability you expect them to happen with.
I don't see why they must occur, only that they have occurred.
Can you explain?
If they didn't occur, we wouldn't be here to note that they didn't occur.
That is certainly evidence that they have occurred but is not evidence that they will always occur.
If they never occurred there would be no one to note this lack of occurrence.
And we've come full circle back to the anthropic principle, which does not imply that all universes eventually evolve life (it implies that if you are alive, you life in a universe that can create life)... so I am officially being trolled here.
The universe (OUR universe) must be configured to allow life to exist (obviously, b/c we do).
Not the same as All universes (in any configuration) will allow life to exist.
By our universe you mean the part of the universe that we observe? Like people believed the world ends at the sky firmament? How would you explain them why uninhabitable planets don't exist?
If all universes start in the same state and evolve deterministically, then they go through the same evolution, then if one produces life, then all produce life.
> Not the same as All universes (in any configuration) will allow life to exist.
Sorry I didn't realize that was the argument being made. I thought it was it's inevitable for there to be at least one universe that will evolve life. Not trying to troll you.
> I thought it was it's inevitable for there to be at least one universe that will evolve life.
Oh man, here we go.
I'm not sure that's true either. Unless you believe that all possible universes will eventually occur. In which case carry on, no truth/falsehoods exist at that level that I know of.
If it makes you feel any better, I agree with you and I have no idea what everyone else is smoking.
It's the Anthropic Principle[1], basically it's the idea that those coincidences having occured can be explained by the fact that if they didn't, we wouldn't exist, and thus there would be no one to wonder why they happened. In other words, those coincidence happened necessarily, in a way.
What he said is not the anthropic principle. He said these coincidences must always occur. That's not true. They have occurred in at least one universe, solar system and planet: ours. But these conditions are not inevitable.
Right. It sounds more like the survivorship bias fallacy.
This is such a weird comment. It's like an attempt to trivialize the article by stating something completely nontrivial with a lot of confidence.
It's the same feeling I had after reading the article, though, and I'm pretty familiar with anthropic reasoning.
The anthropic principle is the most plausible answer we have to the honestly quite reasonable question of "if all of these things are so unlikely, why did they still all happen?", so why not emphasize it more?
The idea is also pretty powerful in ordinary/non-metaphysical contexts in the form of survivorship bias, and something useful to keep in mind whenever listening to somebody successful post-hoc explaining how all of their conscious past decisions inevitably led them to where they are.
I agree, this is in the category of "if things were different, they'd be different".
All of these things had to be some way, and in every way they could be there would be something different now. However, they were they way they were so we're here now.
It's a lot like saying that it took a string of nearly impossible coincidences at just the right time for you to be born. Which is true. But just because dad plowed mom at half past two instead of quarter past doesn't mean we don't have a person, we just have a slightly different person. And that person would also be the result of a bunch or impossible coincidences. It's basically the lottery paradox. Every individual ticket is unlikely to win, however, it is guaranteed someone will win.
Given that we can't yet predict our reality from the fundamental up, it seems like a failure of imagination to assert that you couldn't get some high-level-similar-to-our-cognition sentient beings under a separate set of coincidences.
Related and recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Six-Numbers-Forces-Universe/dp/0...