HRG

Every event is astronomically improbable if you specify it in sufficient detail.

Example: the event that each molecule of air in my room passes within 10^-6 cm of a specified position (the one where it happens to be right now). This event is astronomically improbable and happens - right now.

regards,
HRG.

faustuz

Your point is well taken. These things are not only arbitrary, but unknown. We don’t know what the parameters are. If it turns out that more than a very small percentage of possible combinations, but not nearly all, lead to a universe in which conscious life can arise then agnosticism with regards to the subject of a purposeful universe is warranted. If it turns out that all or nearly all parameters would allow conscious life to arise, or that there is a large enough number of universes to offset the improbability, then we could almost completely rule out the purposeful universe. If it turns out that only a small percentage of combinations allow for conscious life, and ours is the only universe, then we can logically conclude that the universe is purposeful. The jury is out on all these questions, so we must remain agnostic with regards to the issue. We might hope, however, that one day science will reveal the answer and dispel the mystery.

faustuz

You are correct, of course. This is also the case if you play cards. Each combination of cards is highly improbable, yet you are guaranteed to be dealt one of them. This does not change the fact that if you are playing poker and are dealt a royal flush, you will consider yourself extremely lucky.

faustuz

Heh. It's exacly that fallacy that keeps people playing the lottery.

Shadowy Man

It's not a fallacy.

The probability that any single individual will win the lottery is very, very small. They essentially have to beat the odds by a huge margin.

The probability that somebody will beat the odds is fairly good if millions of people play.

However, every individual who wins the lottery has beaten the odds (unless of course, they played about 5 millions times).

Clutch

faustaz, the probabilities you cite are fraught because there is no account given of the possible outcomes assumed for their calculation. (Or, if you think there is, you should reproduce the reasoning.)

What kind of universe could there have been?

One with different laws? What is the range of possible sets of laws the universe might have had? How is this calculable from knowledge of the set it actually seems to have? On what basis do we draw conclusions about which of these unknown -- possibly infinitely many, possibly uncountably infinitely many -- sets of laws are consciousness-viable?

A universe with profoundly different basic constituents? How many kinds of subatomic particle could there have been? What values could their masses have taken? (Any real number whatever?) How are these questions answered given their interdependence with the first set of questions? On what basis is the consciousness-viability of universes with profoundly different basic constituents calculated?

The fact is, without some principled answers to these and many, many further questions, there is nothing in the idea that how our universe turned out is (what we might call) "suggestively improbable". But the numbers you allude to are calculated without any such answers. They are calculated by educated speculation on what would happen if this or that parameter were different, holding the laws and most other parameters constant. Such a calculation tells us nothing about the wholly prior probability of getting a universe like ours, though.

More to the point, though, is the hiatus in reasoning that accompanies typical allusions to the "fine-tuning probabilities", yours included. Consider:

A: We conscious embodied agents exist.

B: The universe has the properties that make it nomologically possible for us conscious embodied agents to exist.

The idea seems to be that if we take it that A is explained by B, we are stuck with some fabulously low probability of B, taken just as a brute fact.

But the argument for Design seems just to peter out at this point, with gestures at this Really Small Number, noises like "Hmm? Ah? See? Eh?", and a good deal of nodding. Of course, gestures, noises and nodding are not arguments; in fact, only arguments are arguments. And there is no argument on display for the Design-friendly conclusion. That is, there's no argument showing a demonstrably higher probability for the scenario derived by reversing the order of explanation -- claiming that in fact B is explained by A. The Design inference (to coin a phrase) is that the universe's having the properties it has is explained in some respect by our requiring those properties in order to exist. What probability calculation represents the independent odds that there exists a designer sufficiently powerful and sufficiently interested in A to bring about B as a means to that end? And what further calculation then shows, parallel to the original situation, that taking that designer-existence probability into account, it is more likely overall that A explains B than that B explains A?

There are no such calculations; indeed there is nowhere to even begin plausibly reflecting on how to assemble them. So I don't yet see anything more than Argument From Gee-Whiz, What A Number!.

xeren

Faustuz,

There's something you're missing. And I think it's a working knowledge of the difference between retrospective and non-retrospective improbability.

An example of Non-retrospective improbability: The astronomically small chance of winning the lotto.

An example of Retrospective improbabilty: The astronomically small chance that the events of the past have brought you to where you are sitting right now, reading this post right now. The universe could have played out in an almost infinite number of ways since the beginning of time, yet the 1 in a billion chance that you are sitting here reading my post, is actually happening right now.

The universe supporting life the way it currently does is only retrospectively improbable: if life had evolved some other way, THOSE beings would be here instead. And if the universe hadn't been suited for life at all, nothing would be even here to ponder how improbable it is that anything exists.

And we don't need a multi-universe scenario to know that. What are the chances that millions of random DNA would actually form in the way they would need to, to form YOU? Very improbable, but only RETROSPECTIVELY improbable.

In addition, if they hadn't, you wouldn't be here to be amazed at how improbable the correct DNA needed to form you actually is.

-xeren

xeren

Double post

Dr. Retard

Here are the biggest problems I see with the fine-tuning argument:

(1) What's so special about physical life? Really improbable results should pique our interest, only if there's something really striking and special about them. We don't care about mundane improbable results (lottery winners, random number generators) and we shouldn't care; we (should) just say 'so what?' I don't care how improbable physical life is, not until someone shows me why it's special.

(2) Why would God care about physical life? Sure, it makes sense that God might make other minds to interact with. But why embodied minds, (temporarily) trapped in decaying organisms? Why would God go that route? Why not just make angels and the like? Why expect God to have a thing for physical life?

(3) Why would God go through such a zany procedure? Suppose he wants physical life. So he sets up the universe to randomize over different sets of cosmological constants, only a few of which lead to physical life? That seems counterproductive. And why can only a few of them lead to physical life? Because of natural laws, which are presumably under God's control. What is his problem? If you want physical life so bad, just make it. Don't play Rube Goldberg with reality.

(4) We don't know much about these constants. First, we don't know if we could have had other values. More generally, we don't know the possible range of these constants. And, what's more, we don't know the probability distribution. Today's natural theologians often just take this information for granted, which is how they generate probability estimates. But we can't make scientific estimates with this information. The best we can do is to make a priori Bayesian estimates on the basis of extremely limited information.

But the following is not, I think, a separate problem with the fine-tuning argument:

(5) We know that physical life did result, so its probability is 1. So we shouldn't be surprised, and we shouldn't seek an explanation.

This is wrong-headed. There's nothing wrong with making probability estimates about something that did -- we know -- happen. A detective can find out about some past event, and then speculate about the likelihood of this event, on various competing hypotheses (e.g., "If the killer was Jim, then the window probably wouldn't have been open; but it was!"). The 'firing squad' example, though inapplicable as a direct analogy to the fine-tuning argument, is an apt illustration of the principle -- just because we know something happened doesn't make it any less surprising.

I suspect that (5)-style critics are presupposing that none of the possible sets of constants are more special than the others. In particular, that there's nothing special about physical life. That's why they say, "If it had gone differently, you'd find that outcome surprising as well." I think this is right, but only because I think that none of the sets of constants is any more special than the others. In which case, this criticism becomes a part of (1).

SRB

Here are a couple more significant problems:

(6) The fine-tuning argument assumes that the physical laws we observe are the only ones that obtain, and that there are no other universes, or other regions of spacetime, with different laws. We have no reason to believe this.

(7) The fine-tuning argument for God's existence is self-defeating. The creator hypothesis can be considered subject to all the same fine-tuning probability estimates as the physical universe. For example, how unlikely it seems that there should exist a creator who apparently has been "finely tuned" to have the desire and capacity to create a universe just like ours! One can imagine feeble creators, insane creators, lazy creators, or creators who have no interest in creating our type of universe. If any of those beings had created the universe, we would likely never have existed. We can say, then, that if there is a creator of the universe, we are fortunate indeed that he happens to have the right attributes for him to bring about the existence the universe we observe! Such fine-tuning in the divine attributes is surely the hallmark of design. We can conclude, then, using the same kind of reasoning as the proponents of the FTA, that if the universe has a creator, he was very probably designed by some other being(s). Since the theistic deity (i.e. God) was not designed by anyone else, we can conclude from the fine-tuning data that God very probably does not exist.

SRB