The Glade 4.0

Hawking recently wrote an editorial for the WSJ that did a far better job of portraying his position than that King/CNN article.

Hmm disappointing. Thanks for the heads up on it though. He's basically going with the multiverse theory to explain the anthropic principle. This has absolutely nothing to do with a creator or not, in my view. What I suppose he is saying is we dont require a God for our particular universe.

In essence, the anthropic principle says that there are an awful lot of things in nature and physics that needs to be just so, for us to exist. For example the mass of a proton, if it were even just a tiny bit more massive, atoms would be unstable. Or if gravity were slightly stronger, stars would burn out much more quickly and life would not have a chance to evolve.

So for this to be explainable you either need to believe we were REALLY **** LUCKY WHEW!!! or... Multiverses. Multiverses allow for virtually infinite chances, and with a large number of chances, you'll get every configuration including the one you need for life to exist as we know it.

Frankly, it's kind of a cop out, but I'm not closed minded to the thought of it and it doesnt remove the idea of a creator.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 24244.html

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I also don't believe any of that crap about "the coincidence that the laws of the universe are the way they are..."

They are the way they are. Even if there's a God, I suspect He didn't create the laws of the universe. He used the laws of the universe. He worked with what he had. There's no evidence that the laws of the universe are somehow mutable. In the unlikely event other universes exist, I suspect the laws will either be identical, or else that the laws that the universes themselves have follow some greater law that determines their laws in relation to the other universes around them. They are not random, chaotic. The only reason some people think it's some great coincidence is that they mix up cause and effect. It isn't some amazingly lucky coincidence the laws of the universe are the way they are, allowing for life and even matter as we know it. Life as we know it exists because the laws of the universe are the way they are. If the laws of the universe were different, then the universe would be very different.

Think of it this way: There is snow at the equator, year round. This is because of some rather high mountains in Tanzania. It's not some amazing coincidence that there are mountains in Tanzania, allowing for snow at the equator. That's mixing cause and effect: the mountains at the equator cause snow. If the mountains weren't there, there would be no snow. It's not a coincidence, it's just existence.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I think what you are describing would be considered the 'weak anthropic principle' that Hawking discusses earlier in the article:

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Not having read the book just the piece he wrote for the WSJ, I took his position to be just an extension of the multi-world concept of life in this universe, which I believe most here at least understand, if not support. I could be mis-remembering, but this topic has come up here before, and except for a couple expected posters, most people seem to at least grasp the idea that with billions of stars in this galaxy, much less the Universe, that it is considerably more likely that life exists elsewhere than just Earth, and that because of differences in conditions, it is very unlikely that life is anything like us.

Rather than make the assumption that the goal of the Universe (if it has one) was to create Humanity, and therefore everything that exists does so to suit us, we exist due to adaptions to the conditions as they transpired. Its clearly not as glamorous a picture of our existence, but the more likely in my opinion.

Religion would tell you that we are unique, not just in our biology, but in our existence, and that this existence is the direct and intentional will of some greater being. Science casts doubt on the unique status of our existence as the sole life in the Universe, while retaining the "unique" status of our particular brand of existence, stemming directly from the conditions particular to this planet, this solar system, then Galaxy, etc.

But then, what he stated in the article is not really a new theory. I've ready multiple variations of this concept, where the laws of physics that govern our Universe are/were not static, and have only reached this equilibrium due to specific conditions during creation. Other universes have other laws, if the "laws" are stable enough to support a universe, and those that aren't collapse back unto themselves and "explode" into a new iteration. Essentially, what we consider the "laws" are really just guidelines... no wait, wrong topic... are only "laws" for this particular universe. Other Universes have different conditions.

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it.


The argument discounting evolution (or the evolution of the universe) because the final product is 'too perfect' fails in the same way that an argument for "How I came to marry & meet the girl who is just perfect for me out of 6 billion people" fails. Realistically that would be a 1/6000000000 chance

We're shaped by our enviornment so often our personalities and similar experiences lead us to meet similar people.
But the real question is more "What are the odds I would develop feelings for someone and that my brain would file it as 'perfect'" That isn't a 1/6000000000 shot. Otherwise is would almost never happen.

It's actually a combination of both. But it's common sense.

You are able to visit a certain area at 9AM every morning to make observations for an hour. Every time, despite being well above freezing when you get there, ice has formed on the ground, though it is already melting. You know that the nights get quite cold. This is not a coincidence. It's a direct observation about the weather patterns in that area you can make based on the effects that they have.

Similarly, we extrapolate laws of the universe based on the behavior of things we observe in it. To then claim it's some great coincidence that the laws are the way they are, allowing for the universe to be the way it is, is absurd. It's like claiming it's an incredible coincidence that the nights get cold, allowing for the ice to form that you see in the morning. To do so mixing up cause and effect.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Pretty much yeah, except we have no proof of other universes but we do of other worlds.

"We're so lucky! We live on a world perfect for life as we know it!"
"Well, there are a LOT of worlds out there so yeah odds are there will be at least one"
I get that.

"We're so lucky, we live in a universe perfectly proportioned to support existence as we know it!"
"Well, there are a lot of uh... universes? Out there? I'm Ron Burgandy?"
Hmmm....

I mean granted it could very well be, even though now you're talking serious SciFi stuff with multiverses etc. And if there are in fact nearly infinite multiverses, you get some really... really funky theories. In an infinite universe(s), with a finite amount of configurations for atoms, things will repeat infinitely. An analogy would be you have 4 pairs of shoes and 3 pairs of pants. A finite amount. You can combine them in so many ways, but after a certain point, the combinations repeat. So in an infinite universe, another you is out there. In fact an infinite amount of you are out there.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

It's not cause and effect though. You're talking environment while the constrictors are on the laws of nature itself. It's not a fact of we're lucky it's not too cold because we couldnt survive if it was too cold. It's that if the mass of a proton were a smidgen more, the universe would be an inert mass of nothing. This is a big issue in physics and it's why Hawking I assume is commenting on it. Science needs something like a Multiverse to explain it. By the way I left something about above:



Really lucky, multiverses or God.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Except the many worlds theorem has a different universe for every single "possibility." Every possible branch since the beginning of time is supposedly modeled somewhere, so there are infinite possibilities.

Additionally, much of this assumes you do not believe that ultimately, the universe is deterministic. And despite science finding that idea distasteful, there is nothing in any scientific avenue of research to discount it. Just because individual quantum states appear random, does not mean they are not following some laws that we have not yet discovered. In fact, if previous scientific progress has taught us anything, EVERYTHING we do not yet understand is following some laws we have not yet discovered. If I have faith in anything, it's that ultimately, everything makes sense, everything is as it was "meant to be," following the laws of the universe it inhabits. Much like Woit's opinions about String Theory, I believe scientists have romanticized elements of quantum mechanics they have not yet discovered, instead ascribing mystical randomness to that which they are unable to resolve.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Which is no different. We know the laws of the universe are the way they are, because of the existence and behavior of the matter and energy that compose it. One could easily say, in some alternate universe where protons were a smidgen more (assuming there was anything there to say it, which there wouldn't be), "Wow, we're lucky the mass of a proton weren't a smidgen less, or this giant inert mass of nothing would form into these ugly globs of elements and stuff!" It's not luck, it's not coincidence, it's just how things are. And there's no evidence it is even possible (and plenty of evidence it is absolutely impossible) for protons to have more or less mass than they have, so it's a moot point. It's not luck, it couldn't be any other way.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Exactly.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

You assume one outcome is preferable to the other. While we certainly approve of this outcome, we're just moss growing on the underside of an insignificant rock circling an insignificant star in an insignificant galaxy (in an insignificant universe?) - so while we certainly can thumb our noses at the poor shapeless mass of subatomic matter that didn't get to exist because the laws of the universe favor us, it doesn't really matter much. (Ha. "Matter" much. Ha ha.)

Edit: Also, who's to say sentient "life" wouldn't also form in such an environment? Perhaps life without corporeal form (since corporeal form would not exist), but it would be the height of arrogance to assume that we're the only form of life that can exist.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Taly already commented this, and she is right. The current thinking in the many worlds is that with the near infinite (at least to our sensibilities) number of planets in the universe, its is probable that the conditions have repeated. Not that I think there is another "you" out there, as the number of variables that existed to lead to the specifics of any one of us make it nearly impossible, but the conditions that exist on this planet to support life, the formation of life on that planet, and evolution of that life to complex forms, absolutely.

Of course, you add in the relatively recent (at least to my reading) that our understanding of the size of our universe is magnitudes smaller than reality, and the probabilities grow. Essentially, the universe isn't nearly flat as our observations lead, its just that the amount of the universe we can observe is a such small section of the surface area of a spherical universe, our patch looks flat.... similiar to what lead to beliefs the Earth was flat.

That said, isn't it pretty well accepted that there at least 11 dimensions?

lol It's not a matt... question of preferable it's a question of zomg big coincidence eh? Like... real big!

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That's crazy talk! I'm to say there wouldnt be sentient life in an inert universe. So there. Seriously though, if we're going to assume literally anything is possible regardless of how probable, let's just say turtles all the way down, cause who's to say?

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

By string theorists yeah, I dont know how generally accepted it is outside that domain.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

No one outcome is a coincidence. If the laws of the universe are mutable, there are infinite possible universes, each every bit as likely as any other. And again making a huge assumption that any other outcome is even possible. No one has ever proven the laws of the universe (or any universe) can be different than they are now. It's not a coincidence if things are the only way they can possibly be.



It's not any more improbable than the idea that protons could have a different mass. The idea that the universe could have different masses of protons is rather improbable, I think, but life on earth evolved to suit the environment it was in. I believe, based on this one example, anyway, that life could take various forms contingent on the environment it is in. There is some evidence of primitive forms of life on Mars and Titan. Of course, they share our physical laws, but if we're going to imagine some impossible scenario in which protons have a higher mass than they do, then one could easily imagine some form of life composed of subatomic particles or even energy peculiar to that fictional universe.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Its not, at all. The four measureable dimensions are the ones still used day in and day out.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

We cannot presuppose that the laws of our universe are a constant among every other universe.

The spacetime that erupted in our void already carried with it the laws of from wherever it came.

There is no way to know if any other spacetime bubble (universe) has similar laws or even exists as spacetime. Hell it could exist as arglebardle or simply just space and be static.

Its fundamentally unknowable as we cannot test anything outside our boundry of knowledge which happens to be our ever expanding spacetime bubble we are stuck in.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Exactly, which is what i've been saying all along here. Multiple universes are more sci-fi mixed with religion than science.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Is there a heisenberg principle at work here?

Both with string theory and multi-universe theories, if there is no predictive or observable effect generated then the solution is both true and untrue. (I suppose one could argue the same about God)

That's a superstate, a.k.a. Schroedinger's cat. Heisenberg's principle is essentially just that we cannot know the exact state of any particle because by measuring it, we alter it. Heisenberg's principle certainly comes into play when we take the cat out of the box, but they aren't the same thing.

Quantum Theory as applied to God is an amusing concept, though.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

String theorists, I'm thinking specifically of Brian Greene, will tell you scientists didnt just make up multiverses to fit what they want to find in order to explain something. They'll say the evidence and math led them there, but it's "highly speculative".

Greene talks about multiverses here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cLvtyYPE2o

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Highly speculative indeed. We don't know why this does this, but if we add in 12 more dimensions and these things there is no evidence exists then it makes perfect sense.

Yeah well if ghosts exist then that could also explain this. As well as very fine noodley appendages.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

True, but the model of the solar system had issues--but someone predicted a planet out where pluto is and though unobserved except by an unexplained wobble in neptunes orbit.

The neutron didn't exist though it was postulated by science long before it was observable.

Just because we cannot detect something doesn't mean it is false.

Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.