faustuz

But that is not an interesting question, and is not even relevant to the issue of explaining the anthropic principle. You’re setting up a straw man here. The interesting question is the odds of a certain configuration giving rise to life, not that the particular configuration among the many that can allow me to live also happens to be me. Scientists do not try to explain why an individual has a particular set of DNA among those that allow life. It is understood by all, including me, that this is an entirely random event and that no conclusions can be derived from it. What is interesting is that among all the combinations that will give rise to life, the particular one that gave rise to me also is one of the extremely rare combinations that allow me to live. That is what needs to be explained. If it did not need to be explained, we would need no such thing as a theory of the origin of life. We could just say “randomness did it”. Such an explanation is on about the same level as saying goddidit. In fact, there would be no need for natural laws at all based on such a view. The planets orbit the sun in elliptical orbits because that is observed, no need to make universal assumptions based on that fact. Do you really, honestly believe that nothing can be inferred from the fact that you have one of the extremely rare combinations of DNA that would allow you to survive? If you do, then you would make a very poor scientist. There would be nothing to explain!

xeren

I am not try to set up a straw man, and I was just clearing up your misconception about what I said earlier.

Stop thinking that we are so important. I've said this before, but read it VERY carefully: If the constants of the universe had been off, and we didn't exist, we wouldn't be here to ask this question. So the fact that they happen to be the way they are is nothing special. It is just one of the many possible configurations that the constants could have taken, and we, no, YOU assign significance to them because you happen to exist as a result of them.

I'm starting to wish the constants of the universe hadn't allowed for life. That would teach you.

faustuz

I think that this is the crux of our disagreement, so let me provide The Missing Argument (even though I believe I have done so, but I’ll rephrase for clarity). You claim that nothing can be derived from a small probability value. I respectfully disagree, and will try to illustrate with an example. Let’s say you and I are playing poker. Let’s say I’m dealt a royal flush. OK, it happens, this might not quite constitute an astronomically improbable event, although it’s damn close. We decide to play another hand. I’m dealt another royal flush. OK, this now definitely qualifies as astronomically improbable. Do you not conclude that I’m cheating? If you do not, then let’s meet somewhere. I have $1000 dollars, if you’re that gullible then let’s play. The truth is that you can, and probably will, conclude after the event has already occurred that I was cheating. The reason that you deduce that the game was fixed is, exactly, the low probability value. You will have (assuming that you are not gullible) deduced a thing other than the low probability value from the low probability value. Likewise, if you can determine that the origination of conscious life depends upon a low probability value, some explanation is warranted. The game is fixed in some way. It doesn’t tell you how the game is fixed, just that the game is fixed. So the only thing of relevance to this discussion is the assumption, i.e. what is the probability. Given the assumption, the conclusion logically follows.

No disagreement here. But, both sides of the equation need to be taken into account to come up with the probability. In the end, nonetheless, all we need to know is the probability. The number of universes, for instance, is on one side of the equation. The probability of life arising is one universe is another. The only argument is over the single item “what is the probability of conscious life arising in the universe/universes”. The number of universes is obviously important, the relative weight of the constants are important, many things besides may be important. But, ultimately, it’s the probability itself that we need to determine. i.e., the only thing we need to prove is in fact the legitimacy of the assumptions, i.e. how probable is conscious life. We need ask no other question.

faustuz

I think I know where we disagree now (at least I hope I do!) You think that I think that it is the significance of Humans, or even myself, existing that is significant. Let’s be clear. I do not. I find that fact to be trivial and uninteresting, and certainly won’t try to make any inferences about the design of the universe from it. What is interesting is the probability of any kind of conscious life arising in the universe. Asking what the probability of that is is exactly the same as asking what the probability of a random combination of DNA leading to life is. The latter question is well defined, so we deduce that the existence of living DNA based organisms requires an explanation other than a random confluence of DNA. The former question isn’t as well defined (although we do have some rough inputs of information to allow us to at least make some guesses), so it can’t be answered at this time. Nonetheless, if it turns out that conscious life is an improbable event, the fact that it’s observed will warrant an explanation.

Oh, and thanks for wising I was dead (or never existed, to be precise).

xeren

Keep in mind I was wishing I was dead too.

faustuz

Ideed!

Clutch

No, indeed. This is subtly but utterly wrong; the small probability of the RFs by itself suggests no conclusion.

The reason I deduce that the game was fixed is because I make a subjective probability judgement that it's more likely that you're cheating than that you got the two Royal Flushes by chance. And the reason I find this more likely is because I have excellent grounds for regarding your existence as having probability 1. And, you being human and my specific knowledge of human nature being quite extensive, I have excellent grounds for regarding your propensity to cheat if there are stakes involved as having a non-trivial probability as well. I don't have to assume any of this; these propositions are not postulata that I infer from your getting two RFs; they have their warrants independently.

So your (sadly) widely-used example assumes exactly what The Missing Argument is supposed to justify -- namely, what I pointed out earlier, and which I'll boldface for you to make it more salient: In short, faustaz, I'm stuck with the existence of not-improbable cheaters. The independent probability of their existence is very high. I'm not stuck with the existence of beings powerful enough to design universes. So I need to know what their/its probability is, in order to know overall how probable life is on the competing account of this universe's parameters.

Without calculating this probability, I have no way of stacking it up against the (badly calculated) "chance" hypothesis. With nothing there to stack up against it, the "chance" hypothesis, however misrepresented, is just unchallenged on probability grounds by anything properly called a Design Hypothesis.

faustuz

Hey, at least now I’m being subtle. That’s progress!

Then you can make no conclusions about any observed phenomena. I postulate that the fact that the planets rotate around the sun is purely the result of random coincidence. There certainly is some probability that this is the case. It is admittedly tiny, but it exists and might (with some difficulty, and enough zeros on your calculator) be calculated.
So, are you saying that if I were dealt the two royal flushes and you knew nothing about human nature, or even if I were human, or anything about my propensity to cheat (say you went into the game thinking I were the most honest person in the world), you would assume that the dealing of the royal flushes happened entirely by chance? I doubt that. What if some cards just fell from the sky, two whole decks, and arranged themselves in exact order from Ace to King (i.e., now no assumption that I exist). Wouldn’t you think somebody was playing some kind of joke on you, or would you just walk away and say “What are the odds? Oh well.” As I said before, based on your criteria we could never make any assumptions that anything happened other than by chance. We observe that planets orbit the sun in elliptical orbits. We no nothing a priori about the nature of matter that would allow for elliptical orbits. We nonetheless conclude that this is not a random event, simply from the fact that the odds are too tiny for this to be a random event. If there were absolutely no threshold below which we discount extremely low probabilities, then we could say absolutely nothing about the universe at all. We wouldn’t bother doing science.
No, you need not hypothesize beings powerful enough to design universe, even if you determine that the odds of conscious life existing in the universe is extremely low. We agree completely here, and I have never advocated any such thing. We only learn from this that you need an explanation other than randomness. We know that the odds of a random confluence of DNA leading to life is in probabilistically non-existent. Yet we know that DNA based organisms live, so we look for an explanation that is non-random. Natural selection seems to serve well here. We now have a name, and a mechanism, that actually describes the apparent purposefulness. What might the mechanism for a seemingly purposeful universe be? I don’t know. That may be the topic for another thread.
Sheesh, that’s what I’ve been saying all along! The whole point of all of my responses to you has been the need to calculate this overall probability, i.e. the probability on both sides of the equation (don’t worry, I understand you perfectly, there is no need for italics and bold face). Now, this would be an exercise in futility except that I do think that the probabilities may be calculable. How rare is life in our own universe? Answering that will go a long way toward determining the likelihood of it arising in any conceivable universe. How many universes are there? A unified cosmological model may one day answer that. The question is definable, and the implications are clear. Actually, I think that the only thing we disagree on is whether or not the implications are, in fact, clear.

Baloo

faustuz,

Clutch is simply pointing out the obvious: your argument assumes that the chance existence of a purposeful designer of the universe is somewhat probable (or at least not so much as the improbabiliy of the physical constants). In other words, you are not factoring the fact that a sensible person would deem "a purposeful being capable of creating universes with predefined constants" to also be astronomically improbable - much, much moreso than "a set of phyisical constants have values conducive to consciousness in the universe".

In your cardgame analogy you mislead: we know there are more cheaters in the world than there are poker games that start with people getting two royal flushes in a row. This cannot be extended to the AP discussion until you address: what are the odds of "a purposeful being capable of creating universes with predefined constants" existing by chance alone? Otherwise, as clutch has rightfully pointed out, you have still not made an argument that a purposeful universe is a BETTER explanation than "the constants just worked out that way".

SRB

As you say, we would need to know whether we are living in a multiverse. Assuming there is only one universe, we would need to know how many physically possible universes there might have been relative to the number of physically possible universes that would have given rise to life. We would also need to know something about the likelihood that each possibility obtains. Since we don't know any of those things, the fine-tuning argument comes up empty. The probabilitiy estimates put forward by apologists and religious-minded scientists assume, among other things, that (i) all possibilities are equally likely, (ii) the values of the fundamental constants might have varied continuously over all the real numbers, and (iii) the universal constants can only possibly be related to the composition of the physical universe by precisely same equations that happen to hold in our own universe. Such assumptions are without basis.

There is, however, one other thing we would need to know that you failed to mention. We would need to know that the physically possible non-life containing universes do not themselves mostly have some other interesting or special properties. As others have pointed out, we do not suppose that a miracle has occurred when someone wins the lottery. That's because someone has to win the lottery and it is no more surprising that one person wins than any other person. We find it surprising when someone gets three consecutive flushes in a card game because we know that all the other (equally improbable) outcomes are almost all non-special. An outcome that is improbable and special will usually call for some further explanation beyond an appeal to a one-off random occurrence, provided minimally-adequate alternate explanations can be put forward.

Do we know that the physically possible non-life permitting universes would not have given rise to special properties? Since we have little idea about which universes were physically possible, or how they might have evolved over time, I think the answer has to be in the negative.

SRB