Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: July 18, 2025, 9:06 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style.
#14
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style.
(March 27, 2014 at 3:46 am)Heywood Wrote: 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.

I can think of many more possibilities than you appear to have. Things like:

The universe misfired many times in failed big bangs before it emerged as a stable entity (gravitation too strong - collapses back into its origin point and fires off again, gravitation too weak - universe expands instantaneously into nothingness and a new one forms in the nothingness as before...)

Parameters that vary could be counter-acted by other parameters so that stronger gravitation might be accompanied by simply less mass, or a delay in the expansion of the Higgs field that gives particles gravity so that by the time gravity comes into effect the distances are greater.

There are probably a massive number of other possibilities about which we know precisely nothing at the moment.

Its also possible that the laws of physics in an emergent universe are consistent for other reasons we do not know.

Too many unknowns to really draw any conclusions IMHO.
Kuusi palaa, ja on viimeinen kerta kun annan vaimoni laittaa jouluvalot!
Reply



Messages In This Thread
A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Heywood - March 27, 2014 at 3:46 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - March 27, 2014 at 3:54 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by John V - March 27, 2014 at 7:16 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - March 27, 2014 at 7:17 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - March 27, 2014 at 4:00 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - March 27, 2014 at 4:04 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - March 27, 2014 at 4:09 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Alex K - March 27, 2014 at 4:21 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Alex K - March 27, 2014 at 4:37 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Alex K - April 4, 2014 at 10:22 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Alex K - April 4, 2014 at 12:58 pm
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by max-greece - March 27, 2014 at 6:21 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Tonus - March 27, 2014 at 1:19 pm
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - March 27, 2014 at 7:11 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Alex K - March 27, 2014 at 12:42 pm
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - March 27, 2014 at 9:11 pm
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - March 27, 2014 at 9:18 pm
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Chas - March 28, 2014 at 11:14 am
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by Chas - April 5, 2014 at 11:11 pm
RE: A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style. - by tor - April 5, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Old Style Evie/Why "gods" are bullshit. Edwardo Piet 52 13204 January 14, 2016 at 11:23 am
Last Post: Edwardo Piet
  Style over Substance Justtristo 6 2256 December 2, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Last Post: technophobe



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)