Fine tuning argument assessed

[max-greece]

This will be a TL : DR for most of you I guess. Sadly - no real way of shortening it.

"The probability of a universe existing that supports us is 1 in 10^500. The most likely explanation of such an unlikely event happening is God."

Hmmm.....

1. Probability. Dangerous ground. One of the hardest concepts to grasp in terms of assessing whether or not your calculated value actually means anything.

To illustrate:

Forget the universe - far to big and complex. Lets look at something massively more simple, a pack of cards.

Take a pack of cards and shuffle them. Look at the first card. The probability of that card being the first card is 1 in 52. Now look at the second card. The probabiliy of the second card being the second card in 1 in 51 and so on all the way down.

So the probability that the pack of cards in your hand is in the order it is in is 1 in 52! or about 1 in 10^67. A miracle!!!

Except of course, that it isn't. Now were you to repeat that order, intentionally, that would be a miracle.

Lets put it like this:

Take a billion people shuffling a pack of cards each a billion times a year for a billion years on a billion planets in a billion galaxies.

Repeat the above experiment a billion times.

The probability of repeating the original order even in this case is still about one in 10 trillion.

Therefore - God put that pack of cards in that order?

Erm......no.

The thing is that a pack of cards has to have an order. No one order is any more likely than any other. As long as you are not attempting to predict the order its probability is meaningless.

Does this apply to the universe?

Well a universe has to exist for us to ask the question - "Why does the universe exist?"

Further, a universe that supports us has to exist for us to ask that question.

In other words we are looking at the pack of cards once we have already estabished the order and asking what is the liklihood that it is in the order that we have already established. The probability of that is actually one in one.

2. Supports us.

Note the confusion here. The question is badly phrased. It implies that the only universe that can support intelligence is one that can support us. It ignores the possibility that an alternate universe can exist that is radicaly different from our own and yet could support an intelligence.

The only function that intelligence has to be capable of to undermine the assumption is to be able to ask what the probability of their universe existing is.

We do not know how many of those possible 10^500 universes could support intelligence. Our subset of universes we know anything about is 1. When looking at 10^500 possibilities that is not much to go on.

It is therefore fully possibly that a radically different universe from our own, with, say, 5 active dimensions, no mass, completely different rules of physics and so on and so forth, could support an intelligence so radically different from us that we wouldn't even recognise it. That intelligence, however, might well be able to ask the question, effectively burying the fine tuning arguement.

Anyone make it to here?

[Zen Badger]

"The probability of a universe existing that can support us....."

There is the main flaw with the argument right off the bat.

The universe does not exist to support us.

We are not special and we are not the reason the universe exists.

Instead, we are an accident of evolution, no more likely to appear than any other species on this planet.

[Jacob(smooth)]

Yep. It's called the gunslinger fallacy. One has to state ones hypothesis BEFORE one gathers the data to support it. The pack of cards analogy Is a good one. I use a rubber chicken. I toss it into the audience and get them to throw it about, writing the names of the people who catch it. I then calculate the odds of that order happening by chance and conclude that since it is so high, I must have rigged the experiment. Of course as it's already happened, as you rightly say the odds are one in one.

Fantastically unlikely things happen every day by pure dumb luck. That's in no way proof of guidance. I've have a couple of straight flushes in my poker career. The number of hands I've played, that's very likely. The chances of my NEXT hand being a straight flush remain pretty tiny.

[WesOlsen]

Yep. If multiverse theory is correct then there are rather a lot of universes out there, thus removing the 'argument' from 'fine-tuning argument'. Weak force, strong force etc is just what it is, there's no reason to invoke 'tuning' at all when different values could be present in other universes. Once again, fine-tuning is an argument only used by the choir, usually preached to other choir members.

[Rayaan]

In other words we are looking at the pack of cards once we have already estabished the order and asking what is the liklihood that it is in the order that we have already established. The probability of that is actually one in one.

So would the probability also be one in one if today you just won a $200 million lottery?

I've have a couple of straight flushes in my poker career. The number of hands I've played, that's very likely. The chances of my NEXT hand being a straight flush remain pretty tiny.

Let's suppose that in your next hand you do get a straight flash.

And then if I said, "Well, the odds of that happening is actually one in one and not 'pretty tiny' since it already happened," would you agree with that?

[max-greece]

In other words we are looking at the pack of cards once we have already estabished the order and asking what is the liklihood that it is in the order that we have already established. The probability of that is actually one in one.

So would the probability also be one in one if today you just won a $200 million lottery?

If I have just won the lottery and you ask me the probability that I have just won the lottery then the probability is indeed one in one.

If I am waiting for the results of the lottery the probability of my winning is obviously a lot less (one in a hundred million or some such).

The probability question only means something is the event has not yet happened - which is exactly the point I was making.

[Jacob(smooth)]

In other words we are looking at the pack of cards once we have already estabished the order and asking what is the liklihood that it is in the order that we have already established. The probability of that is actually one in one.

So would the probability also be one in one if today you just won a $200 million lottery?

I've have a couple of straight flushes in my poker career. The number of hands I've played, that's very likely. The chances of my NEXT hand being a straight flush remain pretty tiny.

Let's suppose that in your next hand you do get a straight flash.

And then if I said, "Well, the odds of that happening is actually one in one and not 'pretty tiny' since it already happened," would you agree with that?

Essentially yes. I'd change it slightly to "the odds of that having happened". Odds look forward not backward. The odds of my next hand are mathematically established. My last hand simply was what it was (paired aces from a pre flop shove with A 8 heads up).

[Esquilax]

The real problem with the fine tuning argument is that it seeks to slip its conclusion, "the universe was made," into the justification for that conclusion, "the universe was made for life, and the probability...etc etc."

A fine tuned thing requires a goal to be fine tuned toward, and without demonstrating that there's a goal for the universe in which life constitutes a success state, then you can't go on to state that the multitude of possible failure states makes directed creation the most probable solution to the success state.

Basically, the fine tuning argument is that since the universe was made, the probability of the universe not being made is so low, it has to have been made.

[Rayaan]

If I have just won the lottery and you ask me the probability that I have just won the lottery then the probability is indeed one in one.

If I am waiting for the results of the lottery the probability of my winning is obviously a lot less (one in a hundred million or some such).

I think that's a fallacious understanding of probability, because in the case of the event that has already taken place (e.g. you won the lottery), you are not taking into account all the other possibilities of what could have happened (which probability requires you to do) but instead you have assigned a probability value simply based on your knowledge of the past event and not the probability itself.

Essentially yes. I'd change it slightly to "the odds of that having happened". Odds look forward not backward. The odds of my next hand are mathematically established. My last hand simply was what it was (paired aces from a pre flop shove with A 8 heads up).

Same thing that I said above.

Again, your knowledge that your last hand was a straight flush is just a fact (or something you just know) and it's not probability per se. Facts =/= Probability.

[max-greece]

I think that's a fallacious understanding of probability, because in the case of the event that has already taken place (e.g. you won the lottery), you are not taking into account all the other possibilities of what could have happened (which probability requires you to do) but instead you have assigned a probability value simply based on your knowledge of the past event and not the probability itself.

I can see that ultimately we are going to have to agree to disagree but I'll give this another go.

Lets go back to the pack of cards example:

Imagine you have just examined the order of your pack of cards and decide to repeat the order on the very next shuffle.

So you shuffle the cards and examine the order only to discover that the new order of the pack of cards is completely different from the orginal (not surprising).

You had a one in 10^67 chance of success.

However, if you calculate the probabilty of the order you now have you will find, amazingly enough, that the probability of that new order is identical to the probability of the order you were looking for, namely, 1 in 10^67.

What is the validity of the probability of your new shuffle?
Have you witnessed a miracle?
If you had managed to repeat the original order - which has the exact same probability for a discreet event as did the order you actually came out with wouldn't that be rather more miraculous? Wny?

---

The real problem with the fine tuning argument is that it seeks to slip its conclusion, "the universe was made," into the justification for that conclusion, "the universe was made for life, and the probability...etc etc."

A fine tuned thing requires a goal to be fine tuned toward, and without demonstrating that there's a goal for the universe in which life constitutes a success state, then you can't go on to state that the multitude of possible failure states makes directed creation the most probable solution to the success state.

Basically, the fine tuning argument is that since the universe was made, the probability of the universe not being made is so low, it has to have been made.

I'm not sure this is a valid repudiation of the argument - although it is itself a valid point.

The theist might turn around and say to you:

"No - I am not arguing from the POV of a creator. I am arguing from random chance. I am also not arguing from the POV that there is a point to the universe, nor that we are the point. What I am saying is that the universe exists and we are a product of it (even a by-product) but the chances of that happening are 1 in 10^500. That is such an unlikely outcome that I believe the creator argument is the least unlikely answer."

As it happens I am also not a fan of the mutli-verse argument, which, although perfectly valid works on the acceptance of the theist probabilities and these are genuinely invalid.