Tercel

"prefers life" was not a requirement, and "does not exist in the universe" follows inevitably from the idea that he is creating the universe and is not exactly a separate idea.

I thought so too, but I get all sorts of arguments thrown at me by people who disagree.

How significant the evidence from Fine Tuning depends largely on how significant you agree the Fine Tuning to be. If P(L|~G) = 0.1, then the evidence isn't particularly strong. If P(L|~G) = 10^-100, then the evidence is probably pretty near utterly convincing. (Since P(G)/P(~G) is unlikely to be quite that low)

Can and do. Thinking it provides evidence for the elf proposition is the lottery fallacy. Because the idea that the elf would like that particular outcome has the same probability as the idea of chance liking that particular outcome.
P(O|E) = P(O|C) in this case, making it the lottery fallacy to conclude P(E|O) > P(E).

That's trivially true.

And I thought his point was silly the first time I read it and I haven't really changed my opinion. Why try to make/expect the argument to do something it doesn't?

I am still inclined to think that the idea of God as being the first existent as a single self-awareness is a priori more probable than any other explanation of everything you can devise, and provides almost the only possible adequate explaination for the divisions I observe between self-awareness, information/ideas/rationality, and physical material reality.

I agree with the first and disagree with the second. We can estimate there to be "good" evidence for God based on the Fine Tuning argument, but until we decide the a priori probabilities of God existing there is nothing to apply the evidence to.

~Sigh~ Your elf could equally well like one in any of a kabillion sequences. A intelligent designer, assuming it took into consideration the question of life/no-life (which experience leads us to suggest would be an important consideration for an intelligent being), has only two choices.

Theli

But this whole argument rests on the hypothesis "If P(L|G) >> P(L|~G)...".
God's existence is not selfevident, neither is his nature. There are alot of factors of G that lowers it's probability. First of- god is alive (in the sense we know it). God has humanlike feelings. God has enough power, although has limited their impact. God favors the design of the universe (this one has nearly as small probability as P(L|~G)).
The problem here is that you have actually (by adding god) decreased the probability as you have introduced a second object (apart from the universe) with assumed specifics.

This whole argument seems to be based on the idea that we should value L higher than any other outcome. And to assume that that desire/value existed before us is to assume the existence of the creator in advance.

Theli

Why is life (L) a refered outcome that we should measure probability after?

GunnerJ

Don't get so worked up by Tercel's snippiness, One-Eyed. He's just cranky because his dressed-up version of Pascal's Wager was exposed for what it is, and set where it belongs.

Jamie_L

Okay.

Having read two pages of posts, I think I have a better understanding of my intuitive objections to FT. I think Datheron voiced them in better words than I did. When presented with FT, I don't find that I have a compelling reason to believe the universe as it exists is more or less likely than any other universe.

Jamie

Koyaanisqatsi

"Fair?"

What are you talking about? What has this got to do with the fact that a small chance of something occurring--that does in fact occur--means absolutely nothing, other than the fact that there was a slim chance of that something occurring?

Are you attempting to say that because somebody calculated the odds of something happening, it somehow leads you to, "Well, that's so small, it must mean a magical fairy god king did it instead?"

This is why this argument is the stupidest one going; it allows desperate people to think that "science" is proving goddidit because of what is not stated.

Ironic that "science" is so pathetically marginalized in all other ways by these same people, yet when something comes along that can be spun into a fallacious argument that has all the appearances of being legit, it's leap on the bandwagon time!

Woo Hoo! "Science" is of the devil except when we want it to prove something to our ignorant sheep!

The only problem being, of course, that, once again, it doesn't prove anything of the kind. It means only that the chances of something occurring as it occurred (the contingent part of the equation that is always ignored) are, in our perspective, very small.

Do you understand what that means? The question that these calculations are based upon is not something abstract, such as, "What are the chances that a table will spontaneously form itself out of a tree," but, "What are the chances that sentient life forms would evolve over time in order to create a table out of tree?"

Got it?

The question being calculated is: This is what we have now, what are the chances of it occurring and not what are the chances of it occurring without supernatural intervention.

In fact, for anyone not so blinded, the entire calculation proves randomness by accounting for every single variable (a + b + c = d). The derivation that "a" or "b" or "c" just barely squeaked by and that's what gives us "d" is a marvel of randomness; not an indirect proof of intelligent design.

It would only be a proof of intelligent design if the calculations demonstrated that randomness could not possibly have resulted in life.

Ok, let's turn this all around, since you think you've got a handle on this whole conspiracy thing here and the nature of the universe is playing tricks with us all, what are the chances that the entire universe was created by the "will" of a supernatural, über human, ex nihilo; a Father who lives in the sky?

Loop quantum gravity; relativity; spin foam; supersymmetry; muons, bosons, quarks; red giants/super novas; the strong force; evolution; all blinked into existence billions of years ago so that billions of years later we would all worship a sky king or suffer eternal punishment in other "realms?"

Hundreds upon thousands of millions of years without any form of life whatsoever just so that four billion years later you and I would be arguing over whether or not the past four billion years happened as a result of a natural process or of an invisible, anthropomorphic sky Daddy who put the whole thing into operation with all of the unbelievable complexity just so we can kneel down and sing his praises?

Since you're so fond of analogies, that would be like you spending your entire life setting up ten billion dominoes on the moon, just so that on your 100th birthday, you could knock the first one over so that it spells "Happy Birthday S.O.M.M.S."

(edited for dyslexia - Koy)

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

Tercel

As always, you leave out the most salient point between your position (positing an infinite awareness that somehow wills the universe into being) and nature, which is, of course, that you're just engaging in unsupportable wish fulfillment.

"Our" imaginations are being carefully and intelligently applied to a given set of facts to arrive at the most likely explanation for how the universe (we included) exists.

You, on the other hand, are simply bypassing applied critical analysis in favor of forcing the facts to fit your preconceived desires.

Yes, "we" are both speculating and making wild guesses; the primary difference being, of course, that this is, ultimately, all you are doing.

"We" are at least speculating based upon the available facts in evidence as they are (i.e., they tell "us" what is what and "we" modify accordingly); you (and SOMMS) are doing the exact opposite.

Why? You're so fond of calculating probabilities. You must know that the very fact you can calculate the probability of life as we know it arising from the universe as it is proves that it is possible and therefore fulfills parsimony.

The question that Occam would analyze here would be, "Can randomness be accounted for?"

The answer is, "yes, it can be statistically established that randomness resulted in life by an extremely narrow margin."

So, in regard to your position, we have the fact that randomness has been accounted for (i.e., that life could result from a "dumb" universe, if you will) vs. the assertion of an infinite "awareness," in essence, blinking the universe into existence (i.e., an impossible to prove assertion from ancient cult mythology).

Apply the razor; parsimony says nature wins.

(edited for dyslexia - Koy)

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

How do you arrive at your estimate of P(G)/P(~G)? The idea that a god exists who can influence the creation of the universe is utterly alien to our experience. Think of every entity in our (theoretical or empirical) awareness, and estimate what percentage of these entities is, say, intelligent. Estimate further what percentage of these entities exists outside the universe, and third, has the power to alter each one of these universal constants -- we do not even have an idea of what it would mean to say a being could do this, and for every specific constant we add, this decreases the probability. This is the product of three astronomical improbabilities. Your contention is that such an entity is the one who influenced the way the universe turned out.

Consider the lottery question again, but imagine that there are 10^1000000 players. If Jones wins the lottery, we have very good reason to believe that Jones influenced the outcome, if we accept FTA. We are most familiar with cheaters, we know what Jones stands to gain by influencing the lottery, and in fact, we already know that Jones exists, so the only probability we have to go up against 10^(-1000000) is how likely it is that Jones could have influenced the lottery. To influence the lottery seems rather easier than to influence universal constants.

One-eyed Jack

Well, I will certainly admit to being slow-witted. I'd like to look, belatedly, at a couple of things that could have been implied by Tercel's earlier post (it's hard to tell what he intended seriously and what was rhetoric in that post.)

Is it reasonable to say that that although any one of the multi-universe scenarios would render the fine-tuning argument moot, that Occam's Razor (aka the Principle of Parsimony)* still favors a single "entity" over the "quadrillions of entities" which are the physical universes making up an hypothetical multiverse? ("Entities" is in quotation marks in the preceding sentence because that is the way Tercel used the term in his post.)

Now, logically one should only compare like entities. Therefore I might first assume that God is hypothesized to be a physical entity, as are each of the quadrillion universes. But Occam's Razor does not apply to physical entities, but to logical entities--logical constructs such as hypotheses, concepts and theories. Therefore with the interpretation of God as a physical entity the thesis that God is a more parsimonious explanation is not proven by this principle.

So I might next assume that God is an hypothesis, a logical construct. However, the quadrillion universes in question are not each logical constructs: the proper hypotheses with which to compare the God hypothesis are each of the physics theories which plausibly give rise to a multiverse. For example, if we consider that a multiverse may be mandated by the quantum many-worlds hypothesis and/or by the black-hole budding hypothesis and/or by the eternal inflation hypothesis, we find that the God hypothesis alone is actually not favored. There are three possiblities arrayed against it, any one of which--or any combination of which--is sufficient to render the God hypothesis unnecessary.

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There's another major problem with Tercel's assumptions, at least as I perceive them: in weighing the God hypothesis against the multiverse hypotheses of physics he seems to place theology on a par with theoretical physics. That also is a false comparison.

The mathematical construct called physics has often extended itself past the realm of experiment and predicted things about reality that were not based directly on experimental evidence. Perhaps the most famous of these is the prediction of the neutrino. Another is the prediction of relativistic decay of pulsar orbits. Another is the Bell inequality--interestingly, as I understand it the originator of the Bell inequality did not expect that his mathematical construct would be testable by experiment, but over a decade later an experimental test was conceived and executed. My point here is that the multiverse hypotheses are mathematical extensions of physical theory, just as these other hypotheses were. They might be therefore expected, if not found to be erroneous, to give a mathematical description of reality.

Theology, the God hypothesis, is not a mathematical, physical theory. It is in fact profoundly non-physical: no orthodox Christian theology of which I know describes mathematically the properties of God, His mode of perception of physical events, His means of accomplishing physical actions, or like attributes.

In placing a theological hypothesis on a par with mathematical physical hypotheses it seems to me that one does both theology and physics a great injustice. Yet that appears to be what Tercel attempts to do.
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* Occam's Razor:

"Occam's razor is a logical principle attributed to the mediaeval philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham). The principle states that one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed. This principle is often called the principle of parsimony. It underlies all scientific modelling and theory building. It admonishes us to choose from a set of otherwise equivalent models of a given phenomenon the simplest one. In any given model, Occam's razor helps us to 'shave off' those concepts, variables or constructs that are not really needed to explain the phenomenon. By doing that, developing the model will become much easier, and there is less chance of introducing inconsistencies, ambiguities and redundancies." <a href="http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/OCCAMRAZ.html" target="_blank">Reference here</a>

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: One-eyed Jack ]</p>

Vorkosigan

If you can stand another objection to FT, it's that it gets thing backwards. Everything in the universe is a result of selection processes operating under constraints. Any universe that functions in that way will appear designed to an observer. But when you think about it, of course everything in the universe falls within the constraints of it -- they could hardly exist outside of them!