A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style.
March 27, 2014 at 3:46 am
(This post was last modified: March 27, 2014 at 3:48 am by Heywood.)
The fine tuning problem is this: There are about couple of dozen physical constants of the universe teetering on a knife edge....which if you changed anyone just a little bit we would not have an emergent universe(or at the very least a much less emergent universe). For instance if gravity were a little stronger the universe would exist as simple black hole. If gravity were a little weaker matter would not clump to form more complex structures.
The observance of this fact of reality cries out for an explanation. There really are just 4 possible explanations that I can see.
A)The Universe is intelligently designed to be emergent.
B)Our Universe is part of a Multiverse of which sheer numbers guarantees the existence of at least one daughter universe that is fine-tuned for emergence.
C)Our Universe is the way it is because of some brute fact of physics about which we don't have any knowledge.
D)It was simply blind luck the Universe turned out to be fine-tuned for emergence.
The extreme fine tuning of the cosmological constant allows me to dismiss D. If it was different by one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion complex structures would not be able to form. It is unreasonable to think we hit a jackpot with those kind of odds. As Leonard Susskind put it, "Its too much of a stretch".
I dimiss C on the grounds as there is no reason to believe this since many coherent models of the universe can be made given our current understanding of physics. Further cutting edge physics...like string theory continue to suggest the possibility the universe could have been different.
That leaves me with A and B as being the only credible explanations. If I assume the principle of indifference applies here, that means I should give A 50% likelihood of being true and B 50% likelihood of being true.
The observance of this fact of reality cries out for an explanation. There really are just 4 possible explanations that I can see.
A)The Universe is intelligently designed to be emergent.
B)Our Universe is part of a Multiverse of which sheer numbers guarantees the existence of at least one daughter universe that is fine-tuned for emergence.
C)Our Universe is the way it is because of some brute fact of physics about which we don't have any knowledge.
D)It was simply blind luck the Universe turned out to be fine-tuned for emergence.
The extreme fine tuning of the cosmological constant allows me to dismiss D. If it was different by one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion complex structures would not be able to form. It is unreasonable to think we hit a jackpot with those kind of odds. As Leonard Susskind put it, "Its too much of a stretch".
I dimiss C on the grounds as there is no reason to believe this since many coherent models of the universe can be made given our current understanding of physics. Further cutting edge physics...like string theory continue to suggest the possibility the universe could have been different.
That leaves me with A and B as being the only credible explanations. If I assume the principle of indifference applies here, that means I should give A 50% likelihood of being true and B 50% likelihood of being true.
