Vorkosigan

My definition of proper Science is that it has to do with things such as repetitive testability of theories. The Multiverse hypotheses are hence not "Science" to me because we are currently incapable of performing repeatitive tests to provide any significant evidence for the truth or otherwise of the proposed other universes. But if the Multiverse hypotheses are hence "informed speculation" rather than actual "Science" then they belong under Philosophy and specifically the category of Metaphysics. I have no problem playing with Metaphysics and Theology at the same time, informed speculation is informed speculation whether it be informed by Maths, past physics, logic or the Bible. If and when the Multiverse hypotheses becomes properly scientific, I will certainly reconsider my assessment.

It is nice that you have your own understanding of science, but it is not the one used by scientists themselves. The multiverse proposal is considered scientific by everyone else. It is scientific in the way, say, predictions of Neptune's orbit were mathematically derived, or predictions of dinosaurs with feathers were made. What is missing is simply the empirical confirmation of the deduction. That confirmation may never appear, or new deductions may show the error of the multiverse prediction, and it may then be tossed out, a failed prediction. It is, however, scientific.

Vorkosigan

TerryTryon

As a queer, I often speak to proselityzers who maintain (1) that my sexuality is an abomination, (2) that I willfully chose a life of dissoluteness and evil, and (3) that I could, with the proper guidance, change what attracts me sexually.

When I question these same people about their sexuality, they assure me that they did not choose their sexuality; the thought of same sex union is naturally repulsive to them.

This is egocentrism. They admit that sexual attraction in themselves is beyond conscious control. Yet, they claim that they are virtuous because they do what comes natural. However, certain individuals are born with (or develop) the capacity to step outside the bounds of nature.

Now, I am flattered that someone thinks that I have supernatural powers that allow me to sin in total disregard of the laws of nature, i.e., that I am so evil that I can overthrow the structure of the universe. However, it seems to me that parsimony dictates that my psychic makeup is trivally different from the norm and that the same physiological processes that apply to humans in general dictate to whom I am sexually attracted.

When I was a foolish young man full of hubris, I thought to myself, "Why did God bless me so? I was born into the Mormon Church which offers the only true way to salvation, furthermore, I am male so I can hold the priesthood which is the power to act in God's name and that enables me to draw directly on the greatest power of the universe. And to beat it all, I am American, a citizen of the most democratic, virtuous, and powerful civilization in the history of the world. God loves me. God really, really loves me!"

Needless to say, all this chauvinism has taken a severe beating over the years. After the Book of Abraham was shown to be a transparent hoax and Joseph Smith's status laughable, the whole Mormon thing kind of fell like a house of cards, the macho image of myself just didn't fit with my sexuality, and examining the place of the USA in the world economy showed less democracy and virtue than it did raw greed, and its great power seems more and more of the self-destructive over-reaching kind.

This thread is ultimately not about the existence of god so much as it is about the kind of hubris I felt as a young man, or the incoherent claims about nature made by those enmeshed in sexual repression. It is about egocentrism.

The first assumption is that "Because I am me, I am wonderful. Therefore, there must be some wonderful power that made me me. The second assumption is "I am alive; therefore, life is wonderful. Life cannot be an accident, because that would detract from the wonder that is me. The third assumption is: "Since I am so wonderful, everything I see and hear must come from the same wonderful power that shines so benevolently on me, making me the wonder of wonders."

I know that I am not the one to break your little bubble of hubris and egocentrism, but in fact, the observation that you are self-aware has nothing to do with the structure of the universe or your place in it. Your attempt to hi-jack the theory of probability is not successful.
No matter how many times it is brought to your attention that the theory of probability has no bearing on past events you insist that the wonder of you and all you survey is so wonderful that the theory of probabilities must bow to your wishes, just as my sexuality must be so evil that it transcends the realm of the possible!

You are so blinded by the idea that you must be more than you appear to be, that you forget that probability is not evidence at all. It is merely a way of processing evidence in order to make predictions which necessarily have a limited success rate depending on the comprehensiveness and quality of the evidence and the intervention of random events.

HRG

We shouldn't forget either that the multiverse models are based on known mechanisms (or at least, extrapolations of known mechanism). Creation by a pure act of will by a disembodied mind, AFAIK, is not a known mechanism.

regards,
HRG.

Tercel

Vorkosigan,
Where do you draw the line between Science and Metaphysics?

Vorkosigan

I don't draw a line, because such ideas require multiple vectors to make the determination. But ultimately, the multiverse idea is potentially testable, based on naturalistic principles, based on existing physical laws, published in peer-reviewed journals for open critique by the scientific community, and so on. I try to include a mix of social and "philosophical" criteria when making judgements about what is science and what is not. But Tercel, the multiverse concept is accepted by the scientific community as a scientific concept. Why is that not enough for you?

I gotta stop this. Tendonitis. <groan> I need a break.

Vorkosigan

Tercel

Well it is in a way, and isn't in another way.
If you want to call it a scientific concept, that's fine. The problem I have with that is the potential for false implication. We all put great stock in "Science" because it has improved our lives and advanced so much that anything that is said to be "Scientific" gains this aura of what is almost akin to religious infallibility. Or at least this is what I percieve as the thought behind the earlier objection that I shouldn't place theology on par with theoretical physics (ie the multiverse hypothesis).
Well of course there is a good reason behind our beliefs about the greatness of "Science", and that is that the repetitive objective testing that Science uses gives evidence orders of magnitude better than the standard subjective once-off evidence. I wouldn't dream of trying to put Theology on par with this sort of Science.
But what happens with theoretical hypotheses? We still call them "Scientific theories", but they don't really have the repetitive objectively tested Scientific evidence behind them, they are only informed speculation. Like Theology.
Hence either, it is not really proper to call these theories "Science", or it is legitimate to compare Theology with "Science". The problem we've got here is that I think it is legitmate to compare Theology, Philosophy etc with some parts of what is commonly called "Science" but not others. To distinguish the difference I am more sparing in my use of the word "Science" and more generous in my use of the word "Metaphysics" than the average person. Call it Science if you like.

But really, if you can't test it by any empirical methods and the whole thing is just a intelligent theory then it's exactly philosophy. So the whole debate here seems to hinge on the question of whether the multiverse hypothesis is testable or potentially so. Clearly we can't currently run any experiments that will give us a reasonably sure yea or nay because otherwise they'd have been done, we'd know the answer, and we wouldn't be having this discussion. So it boils down to the question of whether you think the multiverse hypothesis is potentially testable. If the answer is "no" (as I suspect it probably is) then the hypothesis is clearly a philosophical one. If the answer is "yes" then frankly I'm not sure whether that makes it scientific or whether it would still be a philosophical one until such time as that potential actualised. Thoughts?

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

HRG

Not quite IMHO, since it is based on extrapolations - far-reaching ones, to be sure - of established scientific results.
Well, there is the little difficulty of getting a research grant first. Not all physically possible experiments are economically, politically, ethically etc. possible.

If an experiment would require a particle accelerator around the moon, would you say we could run it "currently" ? We could probably do it by reducing all humanity to the average income level of rural China and applying the rest of world production to this lunar (or lunatic ? ) project ...

Just one thought and a question.

1. Einstein's GR was not testable either at the time it was presented. Light deflection by the sun was not a decisive test, since it is predicted by other theories of gravitation as well. IIANM, the final test of GR is proceeding right now (procession of gyroscopes in satellites as a result of the rotation of the Earth, aka Lense-Thirring effect).

2. IYO is the question what happens inside a black hole a scientific or a philosophical one ? Please note that it is not empirically testable.

Regards,
HRG.

davidm

I used to think the FTA had some force, but I don't anymore. It's completely bogus. I now understand the lottery fallacy, and that alone invalidates it. But, so far as I can tell, there are other fatal problems even before you run the lottery. To invoke the lottery analogy at all, you have to assume that there is only one universe. In this case, the burden of proof would lie on the person making that claim. And, as others have pointed out, while a multiverse cannot be directly detected (yet), there are good theoretical grounds for believing in it. Conversely, I know of no grounds for believing that our universe was a one-time only event.

Also, we have no grounds for believing that all other possible universes would be sterile. It's true that the vast range of them seem unlikely to harbor life, for precise reasons. But the possible combinations of fields/forces/dimensions that could occur are potentially infinite, and no one has sufficiently studied this issue to demonstrate that all possible combinations except ours would be lifeless.

And finally, even if you could use the FTA to provide evidence for a designer (and you obviously can't), you'd have no way of knowing anything about the designer, or his methods or motives. Why assume that this universe was fine-tuned for us? Maybe it was fine-tuned to produce ants, or grains of sand, or stars, or molecules -- all of which are in much more plentiful supply than we are.

Plump-DJ

I don't know if i'm adding anything of worth to this discussion but here goes.

My take on the Design Argument, updated to the 21st century with evidence from Physics, Astronomgy and Biology is this. Firstly it's an inductive argument, so it's conclusion is not unavoidable if that is one's goal.

Secondly, the version based on the "fine tuning" of the laws of physics seems to draw much of it's power from the fact that a small alteration of the values of these laws (take the Cosmological Constant as the biggest example of "design") results in a Universe not fit for anything, let alone life.

Now if you focus on the Cosmo Constant (or fine-structure constant) *alone* and simply forget all the other ones you've still got a pretty powerful inductive argument for the existence of some sort of cosmic designer aka God.

In fact there was a recent article in Nature which is a commentry on a soon to be released paper (i'm led to beleive) that shows the lengths that some people will go to avoid the dreaded D word. The authors of this paper end up questioning the Cosmological Constant itself and the value therein, because the other alternative is obviously to philosophicaly untenable. ("An unknown agent at work in the history of the universe" they say)

So the design argument in this sense doesn't seem to be a "no escape, can't get out of it if you want to" argument. It's inductive and in my opinion it's a powerful argument, even if one does not accept the conclusion. I'd also add at best I think it provides good reasons to think God (or some cosmic designer) might exist (contrary to what so many atheists seem to say, ie no evidence nor reason to think God exists) or at worst to make the notion of a cosmic designer of some kind at lesat a rational inference, ala the Agnostic.

On a related note the authors of that paper infer such a thing (A cosmic designer here or "unknown agent at work") *based on what we know* (not an argument from the gaps) even if they do not like the inference itself, a dislike which seems to me to be based on a philosophical distaste for such concepts as God.

[ August 29, 2002: Message edited by: Plump-DJ ]</p>

Devilnaut

Seems like a god of the gaps argument. Honestly after reading up on string theory and the like I don't see how anyone can say that the FT actually holds any water.

Scientists have found an area of knowledge that they haven't explored 100%! What a victory for blinkyeites, followers of Blinky the magical space alien from planet Naboo whose special purpose is to tune the laws of physics.

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