TerryTryon

I am going to reiterate that the fine tuning argument hijacks probability theory and tries to force it to do things that it cannot do.

1. You cannot prove anything at all with probabilities. It is not evidence. It is merely the way to calculate the degree of certainty with which a proposition can be made by factoring in the "noise" produced by random events. While the law of averages states that the influence of randomness tends to correlate negatively with the number of outcomes, extraordinary events do occur. It is never permissible to state that since a certain outcome has such a low probability of occurring that it proves that the outcome was not random. [Gratuitous Snide Remark: What were FT advocates doing the first week of first semester statistics? Holding prayer meetings?]

2. There is simply not enough evidence to establish how many outcomes are possible in any of the phenomena claimed to be examples of fine tuning, and thus ridiculous to attempt probability statements. Accurate probability statements cannot be made with incomplete data. Since I do not understand quantum mechanics, I will stipulate that these constants do not necessarily pertain to other theoretical constructs resulting from big bang events (i.e, universes) but I balk at the arrogance of pretending to understand all the causal relationships that establish these constants.

3. It is a basic human psychological trait that puts a person and by extension all of the race at the center of reality. The history of science can be seen as the process of undermining this natural hubris. The earth is not the sole creation of god as suggested by Genesis. The universe is not even geocentric. Humanity is not the crowning acheivement of the creation of life forms, and there is no reason to assume that the universe was created in order to produce a single species of life (motives, yes; reasons, no).

The species Homo sapiens seems (at this point) to be a short-lived species that has developed mental processes that allow it to alter much of the biosphere to its own destruction. It inability to overcome the natural psychological hubris of placing itself above and central to all existence is leading inexorably to its destruction.

[ August 29, 2002: Message edited by: TerryTryon ]</p>

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Terry,

I'd like to point out a few things about your post...
This is actually false. While you can't strictly 'prove' something...you can certainly say whether or not you believe it happened at random. A good example is the 3 Royal Flush scenario. You walk into an unknown card game and somebody at the table plays 3 Royal Flushes in a row. You can't 'provehe cheated. But you do have 'reason' to think he cheated. The unlikelyhood of this event randomly happening IS evidence that the person is probably cheating.

More practically, you cannot prove that anything the news says will happen tommorow WILL ACTUALLY HAPPEN. Yet you still believe the news and use the news as a source of information. You do this because in general the news has been more or less correct in the past and it will *probably* be correct about tommorow.


In short, if you deny the fact probabilities are evidence than you deny that probabilities are useful in understanding the world around us. You are essentially claiming statistical inference does not exist. Dubious.

This is a blind assertion that quickly breaks down when one looks at a specific example of fine-tuning. Here is the famous one from Stephen Hawking...
“Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that recollapse from those that go on expanding forever, that even now, ten thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size.”
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History Of Time

Here we see that for life to exist the rate of universal expansion had to be (almost) exactly what it was. If it were slightly off by 1 part in 100000000000000000 then life would not exist.

Moreover, notice that there are not millions of outcomes concerning the initial expansion rate of the universe...there are only 3. 1-collapse, 2-equilibrium, 3-expanse.

If the initial rate of universal expansion were random it could have been *anything*. It could have been 5 mph or it could have been 95% the speed of light. The fact that it just happened to be balanced on the knife-edge of equilibrium is suspicious. Especially considering that the odds of this happening at random are far greater than 1 in 10^18.

Of course these odds completely eclipse any odds a mere poker game can produce. Thus if you think the fellow who just had 3 royal flushes is cheating...you should not think that the universe merely happened by chance.

I believe your argument here is an attempt at saying 'Life is arbitrary. There is nothing unique or special about life that would warrant any peculiarity in the probability of its existence.'

I think it is important to point out that this argument itself is arbitrary. It is a completely arbitrary decision to claim 'Life is arbitrary...it has no more value than non-life'. You have no evidence that 'Life has no more value than non-life'...it is your opinion. It cannot be proved one way or another. Yet one could just as easily claim that 'Life has more value than non-life.'

Again, it is an arbitary decision to claim life 'arbitrary' and thus see no meaning in the Fine Tuning Argument.


Thoughts and comments,

SOMMS

Jamie_L

SOMMS,

I think what Terry was getting at is that although we can come up with millions of models that would not make stable universes, that does not necessarily mean that those millions of models were more likely to occur than the few stable models. We simply have no information about the relative probabilities of all those other models really happening.

Jamie

Koyaanisqatsi

Thereby meaning nothing at all.

It doesn't matter whether somebody "believes" something happened or didn't happen, the only thing that matters, of course, is whether or not it can be proved to have happened in a particular way.

The universe happened. That is known. That is a given.

The question then becomes, of course, how did it happen?

The fine tuning stupidity tells us nothing at all about how it happened, other than to say, according to a certain calculation, the manner in which the universe produced life is, from our perspective, incredible considering all of the events that had to have happened in a certain way to produce said life.

That's it. Nothing else. The conclusion one draws from the fine tuning crap is that it is, indeed, incredible that we all exist, but then again, who cares since we all exist?

It does not in any way, shape or form prove or even imply that a supernatural being designed anything at all about the universe.

It simply is not possible to legitimately infer this claim; one can only assert it, as is always the case anyway.

No, it is not as I'll easily demonstrate.

Right here it is not analogous, since we have only one universe that we know of and can measure, so for the analogy to fit, it would have to be written thus:

Now, the odds of drawing a Royal Flush are extemely small, but the evidence is right in front of you; the person actually has a Royal Flush.

End of salient observations regarding the Royal Flush and by extension the analogy to the Universe, since this is the only analogous situation.

No, we do not "see" this at all from Mr. Hawking's quote, since he was discussing a theory that was then current regarding the nature of the universe.

Since then, of course, new theories positing a dynamical universe (such as Loop Quantum Gravity theory) have emerged that throws everything Hawking was inferring completely out of the picture, which is why theists should never, ever, quote scientists to support their arguments, because they rarely, if ever, do!

In a dynamical universe as theorized through Loop Quantum Gravity theory, there is no background dependency (mirroring Einstein's General Relativity theory, where everything is relational and not fixed in either space or time), which means that the universe is dynamic and ever changing with no fixed points; it is necessarily relational, but not necessarily designed.

It is this central fact that will always destroy any such arguments, SOMMS.

You will never be able to establish the necessity of design, only assert it.

Until you can prove that assertion, nothing that comes short of that proof will have any relevant meaning, so mentally masturbate all you like, it won't change anything.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Koy,
Incorrect. To make this statement one must deny the sum toto of statistical inference...which we use all the time.


Not really. Just as we can have confidence that our card playing friend is cheating when he plays his 3rd royal flush and that this did not happen at random...we can have confidence that life did not happen at random.


Nor do I claim it a proof. It is simply evidence that we should have little (read no) confidence in the idea that life happened at random.


The 3 royal flushes example was not an analogy of fine tuning. It was an illustration of somebody using statistical inference to make a decision.

Incorrect. It is a fact that IF the universe had a big bang AND the initial rate of expansion was off by an incredulously small amount THEN life would not have existed. I think most people regard the big bang as fact these days.


I am not attempting to establish necessity of design. I am saying one should have little confidence in the hypothesis that life happened at random. Conversely, one should have much confidence in the hypothesis that life did not happen at random.


Verifiably false. You are claiming 'the only things that have meaning are the things that have been strictly mathematically proven'. Again, you are denying the utility of statistical inference.

99.9999% of all knowledge we use in life on a daily basis is not strictly proven. You have not proven A-the sun is coming up tommorow, B-your chair will support your weight when you sit on it, C-There will be food in the grocery store when you go shopping. Statistical inference allows you to have *confidence* in these hypotheses.


Thoughts and comments welcomed,


SOMMS

Plump-DJ

I would agree with Tercel. I mean calling it a Scientific Concept doesn't really tell us much, does it? Especially if it's no more empirical or no more testable then the idea that God exists.

Plump-DJ

Well as i said, focus on the fine-structure constant alone to see the power of the argument. If that constant is altered by 1 part in 10 to the 125 (recently confirmed again by the paper I alluded to above, i think ) then you won't have anything, let alone life.

Firstly, the number itself is mind bogginly huge. If you wrote that out long ways on every piece of matter in existence you couldn't write it out. So if you say "Well we just got lucky" you are in essence going up against that value. Not a wise thing to do i would say. And if you say "Hey.. the multi verse explains this" you've now resorted to positing bucketloads of other universes to avoid the design inference.

Now i'm not saying the multi verse doesn't exist, i'm just saying that one is forced to either A) accept that an "unknown agent is at work here" (as the physicists in that paper allueded) or B) posit the multiverse.

[ August 30, 2002: Message edited by: Plump-DJ ]</p>

TerryTryon

SOMMS:
Let me go back to my original assertions and refine them.

1. Probability is not evidence. Evidence is data or other observations. Probability is a way of analyzing or interpreting data. Probability measures the interference or "noise" produced by randomness on an event and predicts the likelihood of a certain outcome. Likelihood, even great likelihood, does not equate to proof. Since we do not know many of the factors relating to the big bang, and since there is much disagreement about the mathematical models that describe the event, all that has been said by FTA is that something wonderful has happened; therefore, god.

Your royal flush analogy is totally and completely false. It has nothing to do with any theory of probability accepted by mathematics. The fact is that it is possible for a person to produce three consecutive royal flushes. The improbability of such an event weighed against the probability of cheating leads one to conclude with some confidence that the person was cheating, but it does not prove it. To prove it, one would need to actually observe how the cards were marked, stashed, or otherwise manipulated.

If I made any value judgement about life or humanity, that was not my intention. The point was that such value judgements are irrelevant to probability studies. I merely stated that humans, being naturally egocentric, tend to bias their data in that direction, and furthermore tend to balk when the expectations based on those skewed observations are disproven. Science is any methodology that creates tests specially designed to limit human bias in its results, and on this criterion FTA fails miserably, as your response amply illustrates.

[ August 31, 2002: Message edited by: TerryTryon ]</p>

HRG

You confused the fine-structure constant with omega, the overall curvature of the universe. The various inflation models are plausible explanations why omega should be pretty close to zero.

Regards,
HRG

Koyaanisqatsi

Oh...joy...Me correcting SOMMS again...



No, "one" must not, since what I was pointing out was the fact that you had stated:

Saying, "I believe it happened at random" has no relevant meaning at all, other than to inform somebody else what you personally believe.

Nobody cares what anyone personally believes, SOMMS; it is not and never will be relevant to the question of proof! How many times does that have to be pointed out to you? 300? 5,000? Just give me a number and I'll post it so we can finally get past this pointlessness.

NO WE CANNOT BECAUSE YOUR ANALOGY WAS NOT VALID AND IS NOT ANALOGOUS!

It is, quite literally, the exact opposite and we do consider it proof; proof that the universe did in fact occur "naturally," since the calculations prove that a natural explanation is possible thereby effectively ruling out anything non-parsimonious with nature (i.e., positing supernature or a supernatural creator)!

AND NOT APPLICABLE TO THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE!

As I demonstrated conclusively.

The only analogy applicable to the nature of the universe would be a player who draws a natural Royal Flush!

The chances of a player drawing a natural Royal Flush (i.e., first draw) are incredibly small, but that means absolutely nothing if in fact a player has drawn a natural Royal Flush!

The fact that the chances of it happening are small means nothing salient at all.

No it is not a "fact," it is only an element of a particular theory (the big bang theory) to the nature of the universe.

Read up on Loop Quantum Gravity like I pointed out and then you can continue to spout out your ass on topics you clearly know very little about.

Well, then, there's your fallacy all big red and shiny.

Then all of your noise is, ultimately, nothing more than pointless mental masturbation; worse, biased pointless mental masturbation, since the fine tuning argument proves that a natural explanation for life in this universe is viable.

The only argument anyone would have in regard to this fallacy would be if the calculations proved that no life would be possible; i.e., that a supernatural intervention had to have occurred in order for life to exist!

The FT proves that no such conditions are necessary!

And indirectly proved just the opposite.

SOMMS, have you noticed yet that you are never correct? I don't just mean when arguing with me; I mean across the boards!

<ol type="a">[*] a natural explanation of life in the universe has been "mathematically proven" by the FT[*] I made no such claim[*] what I stated was the obvious; until you can prove the assertion of a necessary designer, nothing that comes short of that proof will have any relevant meaning[/list=a]

Relevant being the operative term, of course.

No, I am not. Quite the contrary.

Prove that.

Nor must I, for I have made no claims that require a burden of proof accordingly.

Conversely, since the probability calculations of the FT do, in fact, prove that a natural explanation for existence is not just possible, but viable, it would be completely incumbent upon anyone making a counter claim to meet their burden accordingly.

This means that everything you think is on your "side" in this discussion, actually serves only to support a natural explanation for existence.

Great, and, as always, utterly irrelevant to the discussion, since there is no need to employ statistical inference. The stats prove that a natural explanation for existence is both possible and viable, which means parsimony has been upheld.

I'm sorry you consistently fail to understand what science, logic and applied critical thinking actually means, but I'll give you this; you're always good for a chuckle.

[ September 03, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>