(July 13, 2011 at 3:00 pm)Alastor Wrote: The fact that the universe even had a chance to become this specific even in one universe demonstrates an incredibly specific bias. Why was one universe even possible to begin with? Why wasn't it the case that no universes could be formed at all; because of some mechanical bias that allows universes to be created, however, rare. Also, the fact that an event could be rare. shows mechanical bias in itself.
No it doesn't, for instance flipping a coin and getting heads does not demonstrate a bias towards heads. With regards to the universe it's as if you're watching the result of a single coin flip and then declaring that outcome was more likely than any other one when in reality we have only seen one outcome of the coin flip and thus only a sliver of the spectrum of possibilities - We have only seen one universe, we have no idea whether or not this mechanism would produce the same/similar universe if it was active again, it could even be the case that this mechanism has run multiple times and our universe is just one of many that are significantly different - Honestly, we have no idea, so claiming that the mechanism must have been biased towards this specific universe it nothing more than a logical gaff.
Why wasn't it the case that no universes were formed? It might have happened, the mechanism that produced our universe might have produced many events, some of which resulted in something that we couldn't consider a universe. The fact that we have only observed one universe means we cannot presuppose anything about the mechanism other than the outcome we observed was possible.
Are you familiar with blast patterns? Consider the geometry of the debris to represent the relationship between the fundamental constraints of this universe; space, time, electromagnetism, gravity, strong force, weak force, higgs fields etc - The distribution of debris from each blast, being very different from the last, would yield different ratios between the forces and result in different universes, some of which would fly apart, some of which would collapse instantly, some of which would form stars, some of which could support biology and some of which would never be able to form at all - You are essentially coming along after a single blast pattern and then claiming that each blast must have a tendency towards this specific debris ratio.
theVOID Wrote:This argument is accurate in describing what I have stated. You are appealing to particulars and admittedly so was I.
Appealing to particulars? I'm not sure what you mean by this... What I did was demonstrate that your argument is a non sequitur, it's not a valid argument.
Quote:However, it is not necessary for my argument to stand. For example, I'm don't have to necessarily say Y(unknown mechanisms) had more of a bias toward X(universe) than anything else it could cause, for example other universes. I only need to acknowledge that the existence of a universe itself demonstrates some kind of bias in mechanics to begin with, no matter how far back you may go, the universe formed for some reason and that reason follows some kind of rule and therefore is demonstrates a bias against, say, the opposite of that rule. It would be wrong for one to assume a bias towards bosons in your example (the particular) but not wrong for one to assume a mechanical bias which existed to allow for the formation of a boson.
Okay, I get the confusion, you're not using the word bias in the same way I'm familiar with it, perhaps you could describe to me what you are trying to say when you use the term?
Take for example a cause that will produce every single possible thing; every single possible universe and every single possible non-universe, if you would still say that this cause is biased towards our specific type of universe then we are using the word in fundamentally different ways.
The way I see it is as follows; The existence of a universe only demonstrates that universes are possible, the existence of this type of universe only demonstrates that this type of universe is possible, for it to be a 'bias' would imply that this result is more likely than any other result. We can acknowledge that some mechanism follows some rule that can produce universes but we can't say that this type of universe is more likely than any other type of universe or even that it is more likely to produce universes than non-universes.
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