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Old 08-20-2002, 06:30 AM   #61
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One-eyed, you're absolutely correct, of course, but Tercel cannot concede the truth, so, he won't.

Where in Eugene, by the way? I used to live up on the hill above Laurelwood golf course, way back in the day. Went to South before hightailing it out of that strange little bubble of a burg.
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Old 08-20-2002, 07:54 AM   #62
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Nice to see that understanding of anthropic arguments has advanced somewhat in these parts.

Shame to see fine tuning still being advanced in this context.

I'll repost a variation on the lottery argument here with commentary, since I find the lottery argument as it stands confuses more than it illuminates.

I think the lottery argument as presented is too misleading. I've tried to think of a better one and come up with this.

It's well known that there are far more possible than actual credit card numbers (analogy - many 'possible' universes could not support life - for the sake of argument). Let's say one day a man turns up at your door and gives you one million dollars 'because your credit card number matches that generated by his machine". He says no more. Which of the following strikes you as the most likely explanation?

His machine generates numbers completely at random, was run once, and spat out yours.

You might reflect that this was a very unlikely occurrence - the most likely being that the number produced was not valid and the guy kept his money.

His machine generates numbers completely at random, is run once an hour, and every valid number holder gets 1 million dollars.

You might reflect that eventually somebody was bound to win, and it would be tempting but false for the winner to think there was something special about them.

His machine generates only random valid credit card numbers, was run once, and spat out yours.

You might reflect that whoever won might be tempted to think they had been specially selected, but would be wrong. As above. After all, somebody would win inevitably.

He was misleading you, he knew your credit card number and wanted to give you one million dollars.

You might get down on your knees and thanks him for this wondrous gift.

My point is that, given the information presented, you aren't warranted in asserting any one of those solutions to be correct (Fine tuning argument fails). However, if you were subsequently trying to construct a theory of how the number generating machine operated, you might bear in mind the likelihood of your being in a position to do it given the scenarios above. Note that only people visited by the man even know of the possible existence of the machine.

Arguments about 'what makes life significant' in the scientific context are like saying (in the analogy) 'why the man and not the dog with floppy ears that lives at the same house, or the teapot with a frog design' - completely missing the point.
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Old 08-20-2002, 09:23 AM   #63
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Quote:
Tercel
I did not start with the belittling, nasty comments. Acronos did. I gave his post what it deserved, and I hope he's learned his lesson. You butted in so you're simply getting hit with the same for not keeping your nose out of it.
In rereading my post I realize that my comments did come across far more nasty than I intended. I intended no offence. However, I allowed my frustration to show. For that I apologize and accept chastisement.

Quote:
Tercel
Can you say “ad hoc explanation”?)
What great faith and great imagination it must take to be an atheist. Man, you guys have my utmost respect, I wish I had half as much faith as you.
Acronos
No. I am saying that God is an “ad hoc explanation” of the evidence. I am saying that we DON’T have adequate evidence of how the universe came into being to address these questions so any attempt to address them is ONLY speculation. Whether we speculate a God or something natural is probably a result of our prior bias.

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Acronos
I think my scenario of what happened before the big bang is just as feasible as postulating an all powerful deity. More feasible in fact.


Tercel
I don’t.
This, I think, is the central bone of contention between us.

Why do you consider the multiple-universe hypothesis unlikely?

I will address why I consider the God hypothesis unlikely. My main objection is that God fails the same test of design as the universe. I have spent the last few years studying mind and intelligence. I am flabbergasted by the complexity of the human brain. Our intelligence is dependant on a balance between a huge number of immensely complicated systems. If one system goes out then it will often affect numerous other systems. Small changes can make the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness. The odds of these systems spontaneously occurring would seem to fail the fine-tuning argument all by itself. Intelligence is an implicit assumption in the design hypothesis. Why would we think the intelligence of God was less complicated than our own? The design argument would require God to also be designed because it is extremely improbable for God to spontaneously occur. We are right back to where we started. God is not a solution to this problem because he leads right back to the same question.

This is not a new problem as I sure everyone here knows. It is one of the fundamental questions that has been asked for ages. However, it is a significant reason that I lost my faith in Christianity. I have never been able to find a decent answer, and it is not for lack of looking. If you can answer this question, Tercel, I will be truly appreciative. If God created the universe, who created God? It’s a child’s question, but one that I can’t answer. If complexity requires a creator, God requires a creator. God must be more complicated than the universe that we see if he can design the universe that we see. If the God has always existed, why can’t the universe have always existed? If the universe is fine tuned, surely God is more so.

Sometimes things don’t make sense. We have evidence for the existence of one universe because we are in it. We lack evidence for other universes or for God. How did our universe get to be the way it is? I don’t know; it just is. I can speculate all kinds of answers. However, they are all speculation, God included. As I was trying to demonstrate in my previous post, in the past there have been many things that we didn’t understand. Examples include: wind, gravity, stars, and lightning. Some people choose supernatural answers. Some people choose natural answers. So far the questions that we have answered solidly have all proven those that choose natural answers to be correct. Why should I expect the origins of the universe to be any different than the origins of lightning?
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Old 08-20-2002, 09:51 AM   #64
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Lightbulb

You are right not to "get it", because it is a
meaningless idea. However, it does have everything to do with the "lottery falacy".

Your life would be completely different without certain specific events. You do not feel this requires explaination "why", because the possible alternative lives would be no less meaningful than your current one.
People who feel that there current life is "more meaningful" than any alternative do feel like their life must have a reason "why".

The "fine tuning" argument only impresses people who fail to realize that any actual outcome has no more "meaning" than all the other possibilities. Meaning is entirely arbitrary, subjective, and a human mental experience, not a property of events themselves.
When people subjectively feel that the actual outcome is more "meaningful" than the possibilities that did not occur, then they mistakenly assume that the outcome was biased
in favor of some force that wanted it to occur.

The Christian worldview that dominates our culture projects our humanity on the universe and assumes that the universe is kind and loving.
This is why we attribute seemingly meaningful outcomes to supernatural forces, only when those outcomes our positive according to our own desires.

It really is nothing more than people projecting
their own desire for an outcome and feelings of meaningfulness onto a universe that could care less.
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Old 08-20-2002, 10:13 AM   #65
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What exactly is the lottery fallacy?
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Old 08-20-2002, 11:22 AM   #66
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Quote:
Originally posted by Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas:
<strong>Koy,


You're examples highlight the absurdity of the
"fine tuning" falacy. All your events are guaranteed to occur, given enough time or number of trials. As with life in the universe, what would constitute a "miracle" is if these events never occured in an infinite amount of time and space.
You would be correct and rational to assume that the poker player might be cheating. We know that people can and do cheat, thus cheating is a reasonable alternative explanation to the "random chance" hypothesis.
However, to make your example relevant to the "fine tuning" hypothesis, you have to imagine a world where you have no evidence or logical argument that can establish that cheating at cards ever has or even could possibly occur (i.e., there is no evidence of God or a "fine tuner"). Also, you have been playing poker
with this person for infinite amount of time and played infinite hands. All of a sudden he gets
3 royal flushes in a row. Is it more likely that he cheated (something that you have no basis to assume is even possible) or that in all those hands he eventually happened to get 3 in a row?

---

So...

If you flipped a coin 50 times and it came up heads each time you would still think it was a fair coin BECAUSE this scenario is not 'impossible, just highly unlikely from a human perspective.'

If a supposed 'random' sample of a population composed of 50% blacks and 50% whites has 80 white people in it and only 4 blacks you would still think this was random BECAUSE this scenario is not 'impossible, just highly unlikely from a human perspective.'

If your playing cards with someone who plays 3 royal flushes in a row you would not think this person is cheating BECAUSE this scenario is not 'impossible, just highly unlikely from a human perspective.'


Etc, etc, etc.




Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas</strong>
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Old 08-20-2002, 11:37 AM   #67
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Quote:
Originally posted by sir drinks-a-lot:
<strong>What exactly is the lottery fallacy?</strong>
This is when a person who wins the lottery, thinks it must be due to some non-random "miricale" or some "force" that biased the
outcome in their favor. The (unsound) reasoning
goes something like: "The odds of me winning were 1 in a million. I won, therefore it could not have been chance."

Notice that if a million people play (and pick different #s), it is certain that someone will win. If it the outcome is truly random, then the person who won had just as much chance of winning as anyone, and someone had to win. Nothing amazing about it.

Also, notice how people are far less likely to assume it was a "miracle" when someone else wins and they lose, even though the odds of the other person winning were just as low as for them.

Thomas
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Old 08-21-2002, 02:23 AM   #68
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sir drinks-a-lot...

Yes, a problem with the Design argument is that it first points out the small chance of there being life (wich is a necessity for the design argument to be valuable).
But then it assumes that the pre-universe must have been forced to support life, thus eliminates the chance of ~L wich the whole argument rests on.
To prosit that something wanted the universe to support life, you must assume the existence of that being as a premise. The argument is not sound.
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Old 08-21-2002, 12:41 PM   #69
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The probability of a universe with the properties of ours is manifestly not increased on the hypothesis that there exists a design-capable agent who loathes those properties and is strongly motivated to create a very different universe.

The FTA requires hypothesizing a design-capable agent who prefers a universe like ours.

The evidential relation between the properties of this universe and the existence of a designer is therefore vacuous, since that relation would exist between *any* universe and some suitably defined designer or other, preference-wise.
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Old 08-22-2002, 10:54 PM   #70
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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?
A difficult question. I'm not sure of the answer.
As I said to Thomas, the point of the Fine-Tuning argument is to offset the idea that "God is an invisible, undetectable, untouchable entity and Occam's razor is against the existence of an extra entity of God", by attempting to show that the aternative to belief in God is belief in the existence of a large number of invisible, (currently) undetectable, untouchable entities. In short, I do not argue that FT is the preferred solution on the basis of Occam's razor.

Quote:
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.
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.

Quote:
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.
Indeed, and theorists have been wrong numerous times, and occasionally been right. This does not seem to justify treating every as-yet-unsupported theory as likely future fact.
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