Cosmic fine tuning

[Daedelus76]

Has it? To one standing on the earth, it is the center of the universe, relative to which everything else is in motion. To one standing on some moon on some distant galaxy, that moon is the center of the universe. It seems to me if relativity has any merit to it, you can’t get away from that.

You could say that, but it would be a limited perspective. It’s not different than looking at the contents of your own mind and assuming your truth is the only possible way to view reality.

You do know a child, when asked, will say a river exists so a boat can go down the river? How is that different than looking at something and nature and saying “this thing has a rational purpose”. Like looking at sex organs and assuming they “fit together” for a given purpose, and any other purpose is wrong. You can use a broken mousetrap as a tie clip, it’s “ugly” but it works. I do think there are limits to human reason, perhaps some lines of human reasoning are spurious and contradicted by more fundamental ways of knowing, by our experiences, etc.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You could say that, but it would be a limited perspective. It’s not different than looking at the contents of your own mind and assuming your truth is the only possible way to view reality.

You do know a child, when asked, will say a river exists so a boat can go down the river? How is that different than looking at something and nature and saying “this thing has a rational purpose”. Like looking at sex organs and assuming they “fit together” for a given purpose, and any other purpose is wrong. You can use a broken mousetrap as a tie clip, it’s “ugly” but it works. I do think there are limits to human reason, perhaps some lines of human reasoning are spurious and contradicted by more fundamental ways of knowing, by our experiences, etc.

Limited it might be. I didn’t come up with it, Einstein did. And maybe he just looked into his own mind and assumed the truth of it. Not having known him, I couldn’t say. But some who know more about physics than I do, seem to have been persuaded.

Maybe some children think rivers exist so boats can down them, but I have yet to meet one. And what do alternative uses of sex organs have to do with anything?

 

[AndyT_81]

Hi MindOverMatter, sorry for the delay in getting back to you about your questions regarding the multiverse idea.

I would say that the multi-verse idea may be the only cogent response to the argument. It nullifies the idea that it is improbable that the constants take on the range of life permitting values. However, I don’t consider it a very attractive alternative “hypothesis”. For starters, the existence of a multiverse will likely never be able to be confirmed, as these other universes are beyond any interaction with our own. Naturalists may protest at this point and say God is equally remote, but here I would disagree. The God “hypothesis” (really dislike using that word with regards to God, but it is difficult to think of another) at least admits a God whom interacts with our universe, and can be personally experienced, which is something that the multi-verse idea lacks.

In addition to this, I think the multi-verse idea falls on the wrong side of Occam’s Razor. However, this depends on how we define complexity. My preference for defining complexity is Kolmogorov complexity, which defines something’s complexity by how much information it takes to describe it. God is rather simply explained, and has large explanatory power. However the multi-verse requires some sort of huge world ensemble, which to describe would require a large amount of information, and probably can’t even be explained in a precise way. In addition to this, it still leaves open the question of why the multiverse behaves the way it does, why does such a practically infinite world ensemble exist at all, how do each of these worlds “emerge” from seeming nothiness etc.

Therefore I find the multi-verse idea to be very unsatisfactory.

 

[JDaniel]

Some more responses crowsonnow:

I would actually think that the propensity and effectiveness of carbon based life on earth shows that it is anything but weak. But in any case, this objection would depend on the goal of the designer, why assume the designer wanted to create some sort of super strong, indestructable form of life?

Again, this depends on the goal of the designer

I’ve heard this kind of objection before, i.e. “If the universe is fine tuned for life, how come we have such a large universe devoid of life?”. Well, as I said earlier, it does not follow that the universe being fine tuned for the appearance of life necessitates that life be abundant through-out the entire universe. Secondly, the universe has to be as big and empty as it currently is for life to emerge (given current form of laws). If it was too dense or too small, it would collapse in on itself due to gravitational effects. If it was too sparse and too large, no matter would coalesce into planets and atmospheres. Hence, the universe is just right for the appearance of life

Here’s some carbon data that’s new and rather interesting.

nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer-20090312.html

jd

 

[crowonsnow]

Not just any form of matter is capable of organising itself into complex life-forms. Helium and hydrogen are much more common in the universe than carbon (as they are more readily formed in stars), but they are not capable of forming complex molecules.

That’s goofy. We’re talking about an omnipotent designer who is unconstrained by the modicum machinations of ordinary molecules. This designer could have made gold bond with silver. That would have been as natural as a water molecule. I don’t think you appreciate the pseudoscience that is the fine tuning argument.

 

[AndyT_81]

Hi crowsonsnow,

That’s goofy. We’re talking about an omnipotent designer who is unconstrained by the modicum machinations of ordinary molecules. This designer could have made gold bond with silver. That would have been as natural as a water molecule. I don’t think you appreciate the pseudoscience that is the fine tuning argument.

Well I’ve already said that the argument is philosophy/theology, not science, so how can it be a pseudoscience? Anyway, this line of thought is turning into a red herring. I would agree that God can make any sort of logically coherent universe he wants. The point here is how inadequete an explanation naturalism is when faced with the extraordinary sensitivty of the fine constants to producing life. There are three explanatory options available: design, necessity or chance. Chance seems to be out. Necessity seems likely dubious. That leaves design. Fine tuning indicates design no matter what the goal of the designer is. If you disagree, show which premise in my argument is incorrect.

 

[AndyT_81]

Let me clarify something…

When I said:

Fine tuning indicates design no matter what the goal of the designer is.

I meant to say that it doesn’t matter how else the designer could have created life (or how we think the designer should have created life), all that is relevant is that the designer desires to create life. This type of designer also happens to be in line with what we expect of the Christian God (i.e. life, in particular humans, play a primary role in creation).

 

[Daedelus76]

That’s goofy. We’re talking about an omnipotent designer who is unconstrained by the modicum machinations of ordinary molecules. This designer could have made gold bond with silver.

If gold bonds with silver, it wouldn’t be gold. It would be something else. Just like if I had grown up in Saudi Arabia as a Muslim, or in China as an atheist, it would actually be quite meaningless to talk about “me” as being “me”. Things get their characteristics from their relationship to everything else.

 

[crowonsnow]

If gold bonds with silver, it wouldn’t be gold. It would be something else.

When oxygen bonds with hydrogen it’s still oxygen and hydrogen.

 

[crowonsnow]

The point here is how inadequete an explanation naturalism is when faced with the extraordinary sensitivty of the fine constants to producing life.

That’s a pefect example of pseudoscience.

There are three explanatory options available: design, necessity or chance. Chance seems to be out. Necessity seems likely dubious. That leaves design. Fine tuning indicates design no matter what the goal of the designer is. If you disagree, show which premise in my argument is incorrect.

Your essential argument is that fine tuning emerges from that which is not fine tuned. Design emerges from that which has no design. Intelligence emerges from that which was not made intelligent. Having been created emerges from that which is uncreated. Etc.

Fine tuning, creationism, design, etc. are all self refuting, philosophically, scientifically, whatever.

 

[AndyT_81]

Hi crowonsnow,

Fine tuning, creationism, design, etc. are all self refuting, philosophically, scientifically, whatever.

Ok, so it looks like this conversation has probably reached its useful limit

 

[JDaniel]

Therefore, a rough formal form of the fine tuning argument may look something like this:

1. If it is extremely unlikely that, by chance, the fundamental constants of nature came to be such to enable a life hospitable universe, it is extremely unlikely that the universe came to be hospitable to life by chance.
2. It is extremely unlikely that, by chance, the fundamental constants of nature came to be such as to enable a life hospitable universe.
3. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that the universe came to be hospitable to life by chance.
4. It is irrational to believe in something if it is extremely unlikely to be the case, if there is no good reason for it to be the case.
5. Therefore it is irrational to believe that the universe came to be hospitable to life by chance.
6. There are three fundamental options for the explanation of these values of constants, design, necessity and chance.
7. Necessity is not a viable option.
8. Therefore it is rational to believe that the universe was designed by a life-desiring creator.

First things first, what is the support for premise 1? I think that this is pretty obvious, if it is unlikely that the universal constants are such that they produce a life hospitable universe, then seeing as the universe is governed by such constants, it is therefore unlikely that the universe is life hospitable by chance.

What about the evidence for 2? Well, this evidence is scientific based that shows that the fundamental forces of nature are indeed consistent within a wide range of values of the fundamental constants. For instance, increasing the value of the cosmological constant (determines the expansion rate of the universe) in no way brings about any logically impossible interaction with the other natural laws. Therefore, within the realm of possible worlds, the fundamental constants can take on a wide range (perhaps even infinite) of values consistently. However, as stated above only a minutely small conjunction of these values of constants give rise to life permitting universes. This fact suggests that the probability of this small conjunction of possible values of life permitting universes coming about by chance is very, very small. The mathematical physicist Roger Penrose in his book “The Emperor’s New Mind” calculated that this probability would be 1 in 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123! This is an enormously small number. This evidence I believe strongly supports 2, for a one shot universe. There are objections to 2 in the guise of multi-verse theories, but I plan on talking about these objections in a later post.

3 follows from 1 and 2.

4 is reasonably self evident I believe. It is important that the second half of 4 is added “if there is no good reason for it to be the case.” This is important because there are many unlikely things that occur that we are rationally justified in believing, because we have good reason to. For instance, it may be unlikely that I have a hand of 4 aces in a poker game; however there is a good reason for having 4 aces, namely the known mechanics of random pack shuffling and a definitive mechanism of bringing this event about (i.e. a dealer dealing randomly). I argue that there is no good reason for the atheist to believe that a life permitting universe should just come to be (except perhaps via a multi-verse explanation, which will be dealt with later) over the much, much higher likelihood of a life non-permitting universe, therefore the argument follows.

5 follows from 3 and 4.

6 is the standard gamut of possibilities for the beginning of the universe. Design and chance are self explanatory. Necessity refers to the universe coming about by some necessary effect-cause pair, such as it is necessary that a tennis ball drops when released on the surface of earth, due to the necessity of gravity acting on the ball (given that the natural laws are always in effect).

What is the argument in support of 7? Well the only necessary way that the values of these constants could come about through purely natural means is via some necessarily acting natural law. However, all natural laws came into existence at the beginning of the natural universe, by definition (at least for a one shot universe), and therefore it is difficult to see how the values of these constants could come about necessarily. Therefore I believe 7 is reasonable.

8 follows from 5, 6 and 7. The only option left in 6, necessity, has been eliminated from rational choices via the above argument. Therefore, it follows that the universe was designed, and this designer must desire that life be created.

I’d say the logic is irrefutable. For those who are not familiar with the constants, the argument will be all but meaningless, however. For those familiar with the constants, but, opposed to the conclusion, then the normal, run-of-the-mill science-fiction hypotheses will be thrown at it as though they have any real weight at all. E.g., multiple universes, contraction-expansion, universe’s infiniteness, and so on.

On the other hand, the “claims” made in your premises may be attacked. A claim of “unreasonableness” will be attacked as subjective. A claim of “unlikeliness” will be attacked as not so unlikely. A claim of “irrationality” will be attacked as not so irrational. And, ultimately, the claim of a “designer” will be attacked on grounds that “nature, et al,” may be the designer.

But, clearly understood, in the light of reason, I see no problem with the logic.

jd

 

[Touchstone]

Hi MindOverMatter, sorry for the delay in getting back to you about your questions regarding the multiverse idea.

I would say that the multi-verse idea may be the only cogent response to the argument. It nullifies the idea that it is improbable that the constants take on the range of life permitting values. However, I don’t consider it a very attractive alternative “hypothesis”. For starters, the existence of a multiverse will likely never be able to be confirmed, as these other universes are beyond any interaction with our own.

Agreed, but the import of the “cosmic landscape” idea, which hypothesizes a huge number of universes, all configured in their “tuning” according to where they occur on the “landscape” is that while it can’t be empirically tested or rejected any more than the God Hypothesis, it results in epistemic parity. Which in turn indicates agnosticism – we don’t know and can’t know directly, one way or another, even in principle.

Naturalists may protest at this point and say God is equally remote, but here I would disagree. The God “hypothesis” (really dislike using that word with regards to God, but it is difficult to think of another) at least admits a God whom interacts with our universe, and can be personally experienced, which is something that the multi-verse idea lacks.

The merits of that “interaction” are quite problematic, aren’t they? On the other side, the maths and physical models that we’ve constructed for making sense of this universe provide the theoretical (not empircal!) basis for the mutliverse hypothesis. This means that the multiverse hypothesis, while it cannot be empirically tested, does arise as the logical extension of robust mathematical models that work well in this universe. Models that emerge as the resolution for a unified string theory do NOT explain the specific configuration of cosmological constants for this universe, but instead implicate a “landscape” – like the surface graph of a complex function – that has our universe as one of a great many points on that surface.

That may not be the case. But unlike the subjective claims of revelation and interaction, the multiverse hypothesis has something that is far stronger in terms of objectivity – a conceptual model that has solid support in our universe that is extended “outward” or “upward” to the enclosing context for this universe.

In addition to this, I think the multi-verse idea falls on the wrong side of Occam’s Razor. However, this depends on how we define complexity. My preference for defining complexity is Kolmogorov complexity, which defines something’s complexity by how much information it takes to describe it.

As a software developer, and one that works on cryptography and communications, I’m quite happy to meet those what understand K-Complexity, but I have to say I think that’s an alien concept to Ockham’s Razor. Parsimony, at least as it’s been conventionally understood since William of Ockham, was concerned with economy regarding *entities, *rather than informational complexity. If you recall the traditional formulation of the Razor – “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” – it finds the problem right where it seems you are trying to avoid it, with the introduction of a new, fundamental, and yet unobserved, unadmitted entity – God. A multiverse certainly grows the Kolmogorov description of the whole shebang by a great amount, but it’s replicating existing entities. Where replication can be reduced or eliminated, the explanation is more economical, but replication does not thwart the economy of an explanation in the way that a single instance of “God” does.

God is rather simply explained, and has large explanatory power. However the multi-verse requires some sort of huge world ensemble, which to describe would require a large amount of information, and probably can’t even be explained in a precise way. In addition to this, it still leaves open the question of why the multiverse behaves the way it does, why does such a practically infinite world ensemble exist at all, how do each of these worlds “emerge” from seeming nothiness etc.

Therefore I find the multi-verse idea to be very unsatisfactory.

That is quite a curious paragraph to read from someone who understands Kolmogorov complexity. Any God who we suppose is “omniscient” would necessarily have to include in its description the entire information set for all universes. God knows the configuration of every atom and sub-atomic particle, everywhere, or so the theology goes, and that’s just an assertion that demands that any formal description of God would have to include a replicated description of every bit in every universe. If not, then God is not omniscient, or we’re cheating on the requirements for Kolmogorov complexity.

-TS

 

[AndyT_81]

Hi JDaniel, thanks for the comments. I agree there are degrees of subjectivity in claims of “unreasonable”, “unlikely” and the like, but I believe anything stronger would be going beyond the evidence. For instance, it is not impossible that the constants could be what they are due to chance, but it is enormously unlikely. I guess that leaves wiggle room, but I don’t believe that crushing improbability leaves confident claims about rationality from the atheist side (save a good argument for multi-verses).

Hi Touchstone, thanks very much for your thoughtful comments and criticism of my view. I will attempt to answer these criticisms.

Agreed, but the import of the “cosmic landscape” idea, which hypothesizes a huge number of universes, all configured in their “tuning” according to where they occur on the “landscape” is that while it can’t be empirically tested or rejected any more than the God Hypothesis, it results in epistemic parity. Which in turn indicates agnosticism – we don’t know and can’t know directly, one way or another, even in principle.

I agree that it does provide at least another option, but whether this can be called parity or not (and thus lead to agnosticism) is something I disagree with.

The merits of that “interaction” are quite problematic, aren’t they? On the other side, the maths and physical models that we’ve constructed for making sense of this universe provide the theoretical (not empircal!) basis for the mutliverse hypothesis. This means that the multiverse hypothesis, while it cannot be empirically tested, does arise as the logical extension of robust mathematical models that work well in this universe. Models that emerge as the resolution for a unified string theory do NOT explain the specific configuration of cosmological constants for this universe, but instead implicate a “landscape” – like the surface graph of a complex function – that has our universe as one of a great many points on that surface.

I agree that the multi-verse hypotheses that arise from formulations of string theory do rely on mathematical and physical models that do try to describe things in this universe. The problem with string theory is that it seems to be untestable in this universe also, the energy required to directly test the existence of these strings is far too large to be a practical reality, save some massive paradigm shift in the future. In that case I would disagree with your sentence “This means that the multiverse hypothesis, while it cannot be empirically tested, does arise as the logical extension of robust mathematical models that work well in this universe.”. I would argue that these models *do not * work well in this universe. “Work” seems to imply utility, and the utility of models such as string theory is far from proven.

That may not be the case. But unlike the subjective claims of revelation and interaction, the multiverse hypothesis has something that is far stronger in terms of objectivity – a conceptual model that has solid support in our universe that is extended “outward” or “upward” to the enclosing context for this universe.

I’d have to disagree strongly here regarding your use of “objectivity” and “solid support in our universe”. Again, string theory models do not have solid support in this universe. One of the hall marks of science is that objectivity can be guaranteed by experimentation confirmed by multiple observers. String theory has no confirming experimental results and I would say that it will likely never have such results which confirm this theory over others in a definitive way. What we have with string theory is a mathematical description of reality, with no objective confirmation by experimentation, which is not shared by many within the world of theoretical physics. These facts show that string theory (along with other models which attempt to describe the multi-verse) is more subjective than objective. In fact, if we compare string theory with claims of religious experience and interaction with the divine, I think by the sheer numbers of those who claim such experiences make this interaction closer to objectivity than string theory.

 

[AndyT_81]

continued…

As a software developer, and one that works on cryptography and communications, I’m quite happy to meet those what understand K-Complexity, but I have to say I think that’s an alien concept to Ockham’s Razor. Parsimony, at least as it’s been conventionally understood since William of Ockham, was concerned with economy regarding entities, rather than informational complexity. If you recall the traditional formulation of the Razor – “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” – it finds the problem right where it seems you are trying to avoid it, with the introduction of a new, fundamental, and yet unobserved, unadmitted entity – God. A multiverse certainly grows the Kolmogorov description of the whole shebang by a great amount, but it’s replicating existing entities. Where replication can be reduced or eliminated, the explanation is more economical, but replication does not thwart the economy of an explanation in the way that a single instance of “God” does.

A couple of things here. With regards to Occam’s Razor, you are right that it was originally formulated with respect to the economy of entities. However, I think the modern usage of the Razor is formulated by choosing the hypothesis with the least complexity, if all hypotheses have equal explanatory power. The addition of un-necessary entities seems to imply an un-necessary increase in complexity. In any case, if we take the original formulation of the Razor we run into issues defining the term “entity”. I think to claim that the multi-verse just multiplies existing entities is a bit of a stretch. Not only does it involve the addition of multiple universes, it also must introduce some mechanism of universe generation, which certainly isn’t simply another entity which can be found in this universe. In any case, if we are going to stretch the identity of these other entities that far, we can also stretch the existing entities “person” to include a meta-person, God. To expand a little bit more, we can say that there are persons who can independently change and alter matter by act of will in this universe, so we can postulate another meta-person, in kind, i.e. God.

Also you level the following description against God “with the introduction of a new, fundamental, and yet unobserved, unadmitted entity”. I don’t see how any cogent multi-verse theory (which includes universe generation) doesn’t also fall prey to these descriptions.

I think because of these vague notions regarding the definition of entities, it is quite satisfactory to use what I believe to be the modern formulation of the Razor, i.e. by using some measure of complexity.

That is quite a curious paragraph to read from someone who understands Kolmogorov complexity. Any God who we suppose is “omniscient” would necessarily have to include in its description the entire information set for all universes. God knows the configuration of every atom and sub-atomic particle, everywhere, or so the theology goes, and that’s just an assertion that demands that any formal description of God would have to include a replicated description of every bit in every universe. If not, then God is not omniscient, or we’re cheating on the requirements for Kolmogorov complexity.

Well it depends on what we want to describe. In the fine tuning argument, we are trying to describe how this universe contains life when it is extremely improbable that a single universe would be life friendly by chance. Therefore, the competing theories, God and the multi-verse, have to describe how a life friendly universe could come about, at a minimum. I think a God produced life friendly universe can be described by the string “An omnipotent, omniscient, timeless/eternal person who desires a universe which contains life”. A universe which contains life seems to follow necessarily from such a description. Sure, that doesn’t necessarily give our exact universe, but I would argue that any multi-verse theory based on a landscape of possible universes doesn’t necessarily give a life permitting universe period, much less a life permitting universe the same as ours. Now, any complete description of a multi-verse theory would need to contain all the related mathematical jargon and fundamental theories etc., which I am certain would contain more information than the string given for God. So I argue that the God “hypothesis” is the least complex and should therefore be preferred.

You are no doubt more familiar with K-complexity than I am, given your field, and I may not be using the concept in the strictly rigourous way that you are used to (not sure if it could be used in a strictly rigourous way in this case). However, I think my usage captures the overall fundamentals of the idea. Also, remember that we are measuring the complexity of two explanations, not the entire state of affairs that necessarily follows from such an explanation.

Anyway, look forward to your reply.

 

[Touchstone]

Hi Touchstone, thanks very much for your thoughtful comments and criticism of my view. I will attempt to answer these criticisms.

Hi, thanks for the kind words. Nice to “meet” you!

I agree that it does provide at least another option, but whether this can be called parity or not (and thus lead to agnosticism) is something I disagree with.

Ok. By parity, I was thinking that both would be classed as “inscrutable” as a matter of probabilities. Is “God” a more likely explanation than the “cosmic landscape”? In understand your inclinations and your theological (and my atheological) basis for them, but as a matter of real probabilities, we’re pretty much hosed. We have no grasp at all on the size or constitution of the phase space, no way to measure the “background information” we would need to use as a denominator in calculating probablilities.

Given that, I contend they are both possibilities, but equally “without assigned likelihoods”.

I agree that the multi-verse hypotheses that arise from formulations of string theory do rely on mathematical and physical models that do try to describe things in this universe. The problem with string theory is that it seems to be untestable in this universe also, the energy required to directly test the existence of these strings is far too large to be a practical reality, save some massive paradigm shift in the future. In that case I would disagree with your sentence “This means that the multiverse hypothesis, while it cannot be empirically tested, does arise as the logical extension of robust mathematical models that work well in this universe.”. I would argue that these models *do not * work well in this universe. “Work” seems to imply utility, and the utility of models such as string theory is far from proven.

The maths deployed for String Theory are extraordinary powerful and robust, in this universe. Maybe that’s an area of divergence we can resolve by taking a look in more depth.

I’d have to disagree strongly here regarding your use of “objectivity” and “solid support in our universe”. Again, string theory models do not have solid support in this universe. One of the hall marks of science is that objectivity can be guaranteed by experimentation confirmed by multiple observers.

String Theory is not the same as the maths that underwrite the theory, and I think that is the source of confusion, here. For example, String Theory math subsumes the math of relativity; at scales above the Planck length, the math is entirely non-controversial, as its just an “include” of GR maths. String Theory is a form of “quantum geometry”, and as such seeks to provide a mathematical model that unifies our empirical and theoretical understandings both above and below Planck scales.

String theory has no confirming experimental results and I would say that it will likely never have such results which confirm this theory over others in a definitive way. What we have with string theory is a mathematical description of reality, with no objective confirmation by experimentation, which is not shared by many within the world of theoretical physics. These facts show that string theory (along with other models which attempt to describe the multi-verse) is more subjective than objective. In fact, if we compare string theory with claims of religious experience and interaction with the divine, I think by the sheer numbers of those who claim such experiences make this interaction closer to objectivity than string theory.

Well, numbers do not objectivity make, there, as that’s economically explained as the mass instance of similar subjective experiences. Impartial third parties are conspicuously missing, there, as a clue.

But the salient point here is that the maths are just math. You can’t “subjectivize” math; the equations either balance out and resolve, or they dont’. And anyone looking at them can come to the same conclusion about whether the maths check out.

Now, whether those maths map accurately to our physical universe is still an open question, at least at very small scales and high energy levels. But the theoretical underpinnings are speculative, but not subjective – an important distinction. At any rate, we should separate the verification or falsification of the theory from the maths that provide its theoretical base. The maths might not match up with reality, but they are “true” in any case as a matter of symbolic logic (i.e. a valid syllogism even if premises are unsound).

That’s a subtle difference, perhaps, but a crucial one. What points theoretical physicists at the “cosmic landscape” is nothing obtained from their own subjectivity. This is how the maths fall out. Maybe it’s helpful to think of the maths being “discovered” rather than “constructed”?

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

continued…
A couple of things here. With regards to Occam’s Razor, you are right that it was originally formulated with respect to the economy of entities. However, I think the modern usage of the Razor is formulated by choosing the hypothesis with the least complexity, if all hypotheses have equal explanatory power. The addition of un-necessary entities seems to imply an un-necessary increase in complexity. In any case, if we take the original formulation of the Razor we run into issues defining the term “entity”.

Hmmm. It appears – correct me if I’m wrong – that you are thinking of “entities” in terms of cardinality – the number of instances of a type of object. Let me suggest that by “entities”, you might consider the word “types”, the different kinds of actors which must be accounted for ontologically.

As an example, if we see a large pile of seeds go missing from the barn floor, we are not working right against parsimony to suppose that perhaps dozens of mice collaborated in spiriting away the pile of seeds than we are in suggesting that just one “Fleeder”, an animal we’ve never heard of, but is sufficiently large to eat the whole pile in one swipe, was responsible.

The “Fleeder” hypothesis is problematic in terms of parsimony, much more so than the “mice” hypothesis, even though we are only introducing a single new actor in the Fleeder hypothesis. This is because the Fleeder represents an *ontological *complication, rather than just multiple instances of types of entities that are everywhere in evidence (we an see mice darting around in the background even as we discuss this in the barn).

Mapping that back to the cosmic landscape versus God hypotheses, the cosmic landscape idea instantiates copies of a type we are already aware of – the “universe”. The God hypothesis is not like that, but is introducing new types of entities a “God type”, which, as it happens is the mother-of-all-alien-types – inscrutable, ineffable, intractable, intangible.

I think to claim that the multi-verse just multiplies existing entities is a bit of a stretch. Not only does it involve the addition of multiple universes, it also must introduce some mechanism of universe generation, which certainly isn’t simply another entity which can be found in this universe.

Perhaps it will help to point out that the “mechanism” proposed is a universe just like ours, just as a “container” for ours. By extension, this model supposes that a black hole may serve as a “container” for “daughter universes”, meaning we are the “container” universe for someone else’s reality.

That’s important as it works against your complaint, making the universe a kind of “fractal” construct, where the parent universe and child universe(s) are of the same type, ontologically, in the same way a curve on a fractal plot is self similar when zoomed in 10x, or 1000x, or 1,000,000,000,000x. If you can wrap your head around the idea of the universe as a ‘recursive structure’, and given what I’ve read from you I think that should not be a problem, then this objection is removed by observing that the “mechanism” for universe generation is just another universe.

The instances are multiplied, but the types are not.

In any case, if we are going to stretch the identity of these other entities that far, we can also stretch the existing entities “person” to include a meta-person, God. To expand a little bit more, we can say that there are persons who can independently change and alter matter by act of will in this universe, so we can postulate another meta-person, in kind, i.e. God.

Per above, this would only hold if “God” was a “universe”, ontologically self-same with our universe. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some people subscribed to that view, as a kind of panentheistic take on “God”, but I’d be surprised to hear that from a practicing Catholic.

As you have it, the “Creator” could not be more different in terms of type (ontology) than His creation. This is not self-similar fractal reproduction at work, but a personal deity create a work product. That you would have to postulate this “meta-person” is precisely what William of Ockham (the principle he had seized on) was looking to avoid. This is still true, and if anything, more true today, then it was back in Bill O’s day.

-TS

continued in a subsequent post…

 

[Touchstone]

continued…

Also you level the following description against God “with the introduction of a new, fundamental, and yet unobserved, unadmitted entity”. I don’t see how any cogent multi-verse theory (which includes universe generation) doesn’t also fall prey to these descriptions.

I think a key clue is right in the name “multi-verse”. We’re talking about cardinality in that case, the multplication of instances of a known type. That’s more complex than less instances of a known type, of course, but it’s categorically more economically than having to mutliply types. And that is what the God hypothesis requires.

So, I contend that the multi-verse idea doesn’t fall to the same problem as the God idea, because of the fractal/recursive nature of the idea. It’s all just universes. Lots of 'em, admittedly, but no different than saying “yeah, it was just several dozen mice”, as opposed to “Oh, a single ‘Fleeder’ did it” – what’s a “Fleeder”, again?

I think because of these vague notions regarding the definition of entities, it is quite satisfactory to use what I believe to be the modern formulation of the Razor, i.e. by using some measure of complexity.

Are you thinking of a modern example where *cardinality *is considered more a threat to parsimony than multiplication of types? I can’t think of any. I won’t say it doesn’t happen, but it’s foreign to my experience if it is used that way. Can you think of an example?

Well it depends on what we want to describe. In the fine tuning argument, we are trying to describe how this universe contains life when it is extremely improbable that a single universe would be life friendly by chance.

Let’s pause a moment, here. In order to measure our universe according to Kolomogorov complexity, we would need to see what the smallest program was that could recreate the universe in perfect, exahustive detail, right down to the location of the smallest subatomic particle in the most remote region of the universe. That is, to qualify, you would have to be able to run the program and exactly reproduce this universe.

Ok, onward.

Therefore, the competing theories, God and the multi-verse, have to describe how a life friendly universe could come about, at a minimum.

Allright, we have a problem at this point. Kolmogorov Complexity has no idea how to measure such a description — “how a life friendly universe could come about”. Maybe you are thinking of another form of formal description? This leaves me scratching my head. But you can bank on this (go Google it if you’re dubious): K-Complexity is the measure of the shortest program needed to perfectly recreate the a universe at any given “snapshot” in time (and yes, that’s problematic itself, as there is no such thing as “instantaneous” across space that would make sense of the word “snapshot”). Your concern with describing “how” and “why” represent important questions, but are totally unrelated to Kolmogorov complexity.

I think a God produced life friendly universe can be described by the string “An omnipotent, omniscient, timeless/eternal person who desires a universe which contains life”.

See above. That would be an utterly informal description. That’s fine, but it’s not real measurement of complexity, at all. You have to produce *determinisitic finite automata *-- a “program” or “machine code” that can capture every single detail of the universe, and play it back on demand, without missing one single bit.

A universe which contains life seems to follow necessarily from such a description. Sure, that doesn’t necessarily give our exact universe, but I would argue that any multi-verse theory based on a landscape of possible universes doesn’t necessarily give a life permitting universe period, much less a life permitting universe the same as ours. Now, any complete description of a multi-verse theory would need to contain all the related mathematical jargon and fundamental theories etc., which I am certain would contain more information than the string given for God. So I argue that the God “hypothesis” is the least complex and should therefore be preferred.

There’s a lot of problems in that paragraph. I won’t try to unpack them all right now, but the main point I’d like to make here is that if God is omniscient, he buy definition is a superset in terms of complexity of any and all universes he knows about. So, for any given complexity of universe U, a God G would ne NECESSARILY U+N complex, where N represented God’s on “unique” complexity, apart from his knowledge of unvierse U.

You are no doubt more familiar with K-complexity than I am, given your field, and I may not be using the concept in the strictly rigourous way that you are used to (not sure if it could be used in a strictly rigourous way in this case). However, I think my usage captures the overall fundamentals of the idea. Also, remember that we are measuring the complexity of two explanations, not the entire state of affairs that necessarily follows from such an explanation.

Anyway, look forward to your reply.

I think this is a very thoughtful line of reasoning you are pursuing, but Kolmogorov complexity is a very potent tool to refute your argument, rather than help it. I can and will expand if you’d like – I’ve sketched out some of the objections above. Your descriptions are perfectly informal, and thus don’t begin to capture the fundamental nature of Kolmogorov Complexity. That’s OK, maybe you are just looking for a different “tool” for deploying in terms of casual descriptions. But in terms of formal complexity, God would be *necessarily *more complex than any universe he created and knows.

-Touchstone

 

[AndyT_81]

Hi Touchstone,

Another great reply, I appreciate the scrutiny you are applying to my ideas.

Ok. By parity, I was thinking that both would be classed as “inscrutable” as a matter of probabilities. Is “God” a more likely explanation than the “cosmic landscape”? In understand your inclinations and your theological (and my atheological) basis for them, but as a matter of real probabilities, we’re pretty much hosed. We have no grasp at all on the size or constitution of the phase space, no way to measure the “background information” we would need to use as a denominator in calculating probablilities.

Given that, I contend they are both possibilities, but equally “without assigned likelihoods”.

True enough. My take on the probabilities here would certainly not include any bold proclamations about any quantative values that could be obtained. Rather, my take on this is a kind of broad, informal epistemic interpretation of the Bayesian method. For instance, I guess the overall goal of the fine tuning argument as I see it would be to show P(G|FT) > P(~G|FT), or P(FT|G)P(G) > P(FT|~G)P(~G). In lieu of a multi-verse argument, and assigning equal prior probabilties to both P(G) and P(~G) I think this inequality holds. However, the multi-verse idea makes problems here, and I am still trying to figure out a possible way to reconstruct this in the presence of such an idea.

For example, String Theory math subsumes the math of relativity; at scales above the Planck length, the math is entirely non-controversial, as its just an “include” of GR maths. String Theory is a form of “quantum geometry”, and as such seeks to provide a mathematical model that unifies our empirical and theoretical understandings both above and below Planck scales.

This is fine, but I don’t think GR below the Plank scales necessarily leads to string theory, as there are other approaches which seem to be having some measures of success here (though I am no expert).

Well, numbers do not objectivity make, there, as that’s economically explained as the mass instance of similar subjective experiences.

Yes I agree, which is why I emphasised “closer” to objectivity. I guess my (somewhat rhetorical) point there was to highlight that without some sort of ontological confirmation of the objects of string theory, namely, strings themselves, through experimentation, then the normal ways of ensuring objectivity in science are lacking. More on this later though.

But the salient point here is that the maths are just math. You can’t “subjectivize” math; the equations either balance out and resolve, or they dont’. And anyone looking at them can come to the same conclusion about whether the maths check out.

Now, whether those maths map accurately to our physical universe is still an open question, at least at very small scales and high energy levels. But the theoretical underpinnings are speculative, but not subjective – an important distinction. At any rate, we should separate the verification or falsification of the theory from the maths that provide its theoretical base. The maths might not match up with reality, but they are “true” in any case as a matter of symbolic logic (i.e. a valid syllogism even if premises are unsound).

I agree almost completely here. Mathematical propositions can be determined to be objectively true even if they refer to no existing thing. So I agree that you can’t subjectivize math. I guess my underlying point (perhaps poorly worded) was that there are a number of quantum gravity theories, that their respective proponents believe are mathematically consistent (and therefore “true” in that sense) yet have different “physical” entities/fields/geometries etc. which compose them. Hence, if one is faced with a number of mathematical formulations which are internally consistent and promise to unify physics, how is one to choose between these when there is a lack of experimentation? I don’t think that any fully consistent mathematical model which attempts to describe some objective reality is necessarily unique, would you agree? This problem is what I meant when I used the term “subjective”.

What points theoretical physicists at the “cosmic landscape” is nothing obtained from their own subjectivity. This is how the maths fall out. Maybe it’s helpful to think of the maths being “discovered” rather than “constructed”?

I guess I would question if this is just how the maths falls out. As I said above, there seems to be other quantum gravity models which no doubt proponents believe are mathematically internally consistent and rigourous, so how does one test the ontology of their proposed entities/fields/geometries etc.? I think saying maths is “discovered” in this instance is problematic. The different QG models all use maths which is, in itself, potentially objectively true, but just because those mathematics are true does not necessitate the model entities/fields/geometries, which are variables in said maths, as ontologically real. In the case of string theory, these strings and branes need to be ontologically real for multiple universes to be real.

Will have to leave it there at the moment. I will attempt to address your other points tomorrow.

 

[AndyT_81]

continuing on…

Hmmm. It appears – correct me if I’m wrong – that you are thinking of “entities” in terms of cardinality – the number of instances of a type of object. Let me suggest that by “entities”, you might consider the word “types”, the different kinds of actors which must be accounted for ontologically.

No, I wasn’t thinking of entities that way. I was considering the universe generation mechanism as a new type of entity. This is perhaps an incorrect way of thinking of things though with Smolin’s idea of the multi-verse, i.e. universe genesis from black hole singularities. However for other theories such as Linde’s eternal inflation model, whereby individual pocket universes nucleate out of this eternally inflating region, I think it would be a stretch to say that this eternally inflating mechanism is somehow of the same type as this universe.

Mapping that back to the cosmic landscape versus God hypotheses, the cosmic landscape idea instantiates copies of a type we are already aware of – the “universe”. The God hypothesis is not like that, but is introducing new types of entities a “God type”, which, as it happens is the mother-of-all-alien-types – inscrutable, ineffable, intractable, intangible.

Well, I would again say that certain multi-verse models do contain mechanisms which are arguably of different type than this universe, such as an eternally inflating region. I would also disagree that God, at least in the traditional way of understanding Him, is a completely new type, but more on this later.

Perhaps it will help to point out that the “mechanism” proposed is a universe just like ours, just as a “container” for ours. By extension, this model supposes that a black hole may serve as a “container” for “daughter universes”, meaning we are the “container” universe for someone else’s reality.

That’s important as it works against your complaint, making the universe a kind of “fractal” construct, where the parent universe and child universe(s) are of the same type, ontologically, in the same way a curve on a fractal plot is self similar when zoomed in 10x, or 1000x, or 1,000,000,000,000x. If you can wrap your head around the idea of the universe as a ‘recursive structure’, and given what I’ve read from you I think that should not be a problem, then this objection is removed by observing that the “mechanism” for universe generation is just another universe.

The instances are multiplied, but the types are not.

Ok, but that is only one multi-verse model (and as far as I can gather, not the most popular amongst physicists).

Per above, this would only hold if “God” was a “universe”, ontologically self-same with our universe. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some people subscribed to that view, as a kind of panentheistic take on “God”, but I’d be surprised to hear that from a practicing Catholic.

I’m not sure how this follows, perhaps there is a misunderstanding here. My argument is that God is not a completely new type, and shares characteristics with existing types, i.e. other persons, such as a free will, the ability to cause things freely, an intellect etc. It is not logically necessary that whatever mechanism that produced the universe be ontologically self-same with said universe, but it doesn’t then follow that whatever caused the universe (which isn’t ontologically self-same) cannot be of a similar type of entities within said universe.

That you would have to postulate this “meta-person” is precisely what William of Ockham (the principle he had seized on) was looking to avoid. This is still true, and if anything, more true today, then it was back in Bill O’s day.

I’m not sure if God could be classed as an entirely new type, of the form “a new, fundamental, and yet unobserved, unadmitted entity”, as He shares significant characteristics with an existing type, namely, persons. While God may be “more” of a new entity than similar universes in the recursive structure type of multi-verse, I wouldn’t consider Him to be “more” of a new entity than the eternal inflation regime in other multi-verse theories.

more to follow…