hinduwoman

The Antrhopic principle turns things the other way round.
Life evolved automatically because certain conditions were suitable for it. it was not that conditions were finetuned beforehand to allow emergence of life.

Secular Pinoy

Uhm, no. Statisticians are quite aware of the opposite. http://www.skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html

Dr. Retard

The starting point of the fine-tuning argument is that the vast majority of cosmological constants could not have allowed for physical life at all, no matter what. The fact that life-permitting constants resulted seems striking and surprising to a lot of people, and so they seek an explanation for it.

HRG

Variation on your theme (4):

We don't know what a "possible" universe means, and the fine-tuning adherents (FTA) confuse possibility of an event [i]within the universe with possibility of the universe itself. I can well claim that a universe must exist in order to be possible; thus the FTA must postulate the existence of many universes with different constants. As soon as they do that, their argument dissolves, since it is a tautology that a universe where life developed is life-friendly.

Regards,
HRG.

faustuz

Clutch (and others),

I don’t really disagree with much about your post, except that it isn’t really a critique of my understandings about probability, but rather about my a priori assumptions. In fact, I think that you are not really being fair to my original argument, or my subsequent clarifications, because I have never said that my assumptions are infallibly justified. In fact I’ve never even said that there is much justification at all, given how little science currently has to say on the subject. There is indeed a great deal of doubt about the necessary parameters for conscious life to arise. There is much doubt about the possibility of a multiverse. There may be still more doubts with respect to the subject that I do not know about and therefore have not addressed, although I think these two, which I addressed in my very first post, are the big variables in the equation.

My point is that, given the assumption that the parameters are narrow, and that this is the only universe, here are the implications. Since the assumptions are not unreasonable, and indeed are held by many serious scientists in relevant fields (my informal and obviously unscientific browsing on the Internet makes me think most), they must be taken seriously. Since following these assumptions to their logical conclusion implies a purposeful universe (although not necessarily one designed by an external agent, e.g. God), the possibility of the universe being purposeful must be taken seriously. This in turn applies that agnosticism on the issue is warranted. When I say agnosticism is warranted it is because there are good reasons, although far from definitive reasons, to believe that the universe is purposeful, since widely held beliefs based on reasonable scientific inquiry (generating life is hard, there is one universe) are extant. In other words, since there is serious doubt on the subject, there must be serious doubt on the conclusion.

I think that the criticisms of the fine tuning argument, which is what you are critiquing in your post, generally are that the adherents go in the wrong direction. They start with the assumption that life exists, that that by itself is amazing and improbable, and leave it at that. This is indeed a fallacy. It is taking as an assumption that which is to be proved. What really needs to be proved is that the conditions under which conscious life develop are indeed rare, and that among the various configurations that possible universes might take, only few lead to life. This assumption is not proven, but a few observations about the life and the universe lead us to believe that we should take the possibility very seriously. For one, life is extremely rare in the universe. So far in our (admittedly very limited) search we have only found one place in the universe where it arises, Earth. Secondly many (but far from all) cosmologists believe that among the many parameters the fundamental physical constants might take, only few lead to conditions under which conscious life might arise. Again, these arguments are speculative, but they must at least be taken seriously. These are positions take by serious researchers in their respective fields, not by a few crackpot creationist or intelligent design “scientists”.

There seems to be a recurring assumption in this thread that I am advocating the existence of a purposeful universe, QED. Well, let’s settle this now. I am not, and I don’t recognize that straw man. I am trying to understand the conditions under which the AP implies purposeful design. I believe I have identified these conditions (rare life, one universe). If I have not, I would like to know why I have not. Furthermore, and this is really the crux of what interests me about the subject, it seems that the truth or falsity of the existence of these conditions might be amenable to scientific examination. In other words, the question on whether or not the universe is purposeful might be answerable. I consider that by itself to be a big deal.

faustuz

I know this. It's what I've been trying to say all along. Astronomically improbable things happen given an astronomically large number of events. This is because the large number of events negates the improbability of the single events. This is one of the most fundamental theorems of statistics. Somebody will win the lottery, sometimes people are dealt a royal flush, but only because poker is so popular. Still, if only one person bought one ticket and played the lottery, it would be a miracle (or more likely fixed).

We don’t need to argue about this particular subject any more, we seem to be on the same page.

xeren

But if people would stop thinking so ego- and anthropocentrically, they would realize that Hinduwoman is right. We happen exist because the constants of the universe are the way they happen to be. If they weren't, well we wouldn't be here to ponder the improbability of our existence, now would we?

faustuz

I am aware of this problem. I’ve tried to address exactly this issue in my answer to clutch.

I do think that your DNA example is besides the point. In fact I rather think I can turn it around and make my point. The fact that my DNA is in its current configuration is small, but yes we can assume that since it happened, it is at this point in time p=1. However, most configurations of my DNA would leave me dead. Does the fact that I am in fact alive tell me anything about my DNA? It tells me that among all the possible combinations of DNA, the extremely rare one that would leave me alive actually occurred. I can make assumptions based on this fact, and in fact people, both scientists and theologians, do. The fact that I am alive, and the extremely low probability that this could happen entirely by chance as a single event, implies a mechanism other than randomness. If it did not imply another mechanism the scientists wouldn’t postulate a theory of evolution and theologians wouldn’t postulate God. We would just say it happened by random chance that DNA fell into exactly the correct configuration and go our merry way.

The fact that we, both scientists and theologians, don’t do this leads us to believe that one can make assumptions about events with low probability actually occurring. And yes, it does hinge on going in the proper direction. One should start with random chance and try to imagine possible outcomes. In other words one starts with a hypothesis and tries to work out the possible scenarios the hypothesis implies. If those possibilities are not observed, then the hypothesis is false. One starts with the hypothesis that random configurations of DNA can lead to living organisms. Since the hypothesis is easily refutable one assumes that the configurations of DNA observed in living organisms is not random. By the same token one can start with the hypothesis that the observed universe can be explained by random chance. One then might make testable inferences from that fact. For instance one might try to assess whether or not a random set of cosmological constants would allow for the existence of conscious life. I don’t know if we yet have the tools to make that assessment, but at least the problem can be formulated, and in the proper direction.

xeren

Faustuz, you're just not getting it. I'm not talking about the improbability that DNA would form a human. When 2 humans have sex, the odds that their offspring is human are 1:1. What I am talking about is the odds that human DNA would form the exact person that you are.

You see faustuz, you're not really very special. None of us are. The odds that you exist are only retrospectively improbable. You existing is like the lottery coming out to be six random numbers. They always come out to be six random numbers. It is only when you assign significance to those numbers, by buying a lotto ticket, that those 6 random numbers coming up the ones you picked make it non-retrospectively improbable.

Unfortunately, several years ago before you were born, no one said,"Wouldn't it be amazing if a person with the exact DNA sequence GTACCTGAATCCGA...(repeat millions more times) was created?" Becauce if they had, your birth would have been one AMAZING event.

-xeren

Clutch

fautaz,This is probably a misreading. There is general agreement that there's a question for study. The theistically-minded claim that the question is one of the "narrowness of parameters for life". Those (theists or otherwise) who do not intend to extract theological conclusions tend to portray the question as one about the number and "specialness" of the parameters; narrowness-for-life does not come into it. It's just a matter of explanatory simplicity versus the large (ie, mid-teens) number of parameters on the received view, and the very large number (ie, millions) on string theory and such. Nothing about life in there at all. Whoaaa! Excellent -- perfect -- thanks for admirable clarity. Because this is exactly what I observed was The Missing Argument. Please show how one gets from your assumptions, fraught though they may be, to this "logical conclusion". The whole point of my post was that pointing to some small probability value, however sound or baseless its derivation, does not amount to an argument for anything except... the small probability value. There is just no argument whatever for so much as the relevance of theism or design more generally -- not without a demonstration that the small probability is larger on this alternative hypothesis -- whatever it's supposed to be in its specifics.
The thing is, that is not at all what "really needs to be proved". What really needs to be proved -- apart from the legitimacy of the assumptions, it goes without saying -- is that the probability of conscious life developing, on the the assumptions in question, is lower, all things considered, than on some other specified account. So what's the other account, and what is the probability of conscious life arising on that account -- taking into consideration the independent probability that the objects and mechanism posed on that account also exist?

Without that number on the other side of the scales, there's just no argument. None at all.