Anthropic Nonsense

[Guest]

A quick refutation of the overly cited anthropic principle: http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm

[Chowlett]

Quick? You call 8 pages quick? What's a long refutation look like?

[Boris Godunov]

Excellent. I especially like his closing sentence.

[Logical Realist]

Me too

Me too, I loved it when he said

Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic, without any laws or regularities at all, could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot.

Showing how unfalsifiable and superfluous the Design argument really is.

[Boris Godunov]

LOL, yes, that's a good one, too. I must remember to bring that up to the ID people I know...

[Lincoln]

The only problem with the article is that it does not mention that the God asserted by much of the world claims to have cursed the earth and brought corruption into his own creation. If the product of original creation was still perfect then it would tend to disprove at least that particular God.

[Dr.Oogkloot]

A good article, but it doesn't refute the anthropic principle, it refutes design - that's something completely different.

Also I disagree with this:

You find that unless you arrange the theory in just the right way you get nonsense, like effects preceding causes, or infinite probabilities.

There's no law of logic that says effects can't precede causes. (unless you define the words that way...)

[Oldenbarnevelt]

Originally posted by Dr.Oogkloot
A good article, but it doesn't refute the anthropic principle, it refutes design - that's something completely different.

You are absolutely right, Dry Scrotum/Dr Eye-Scrotum (how about that translation?), so all of the thread so far has been off-topic.

So let me quote some definitions:

A N T H R O P I C P R I N C I P L E

Here are some definitions, first from Barrow and Tipler:

Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP): The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so.

Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP): The Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history. Because:
1 There exists one possible Universe 'designed' with the goal of generating and sustaining 'observers'. Or...
2 Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being (Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle (PAP)). Or...
3 An ensemble of other different universes is necessary for the existence of our Universe (which may be related to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics).

Final Anthropic Principle (FAP): Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.

R. Michael Perry has another interesting variant of the anthropic principle:
Individual Anthropic Metaprinciple (IAM): The universe that I as an observer perceive is so structured that I am immortal.

Running somewhat counter to all these is this:

The Principle of Mediocrity(PoM): Observers must assume (as far as is possible) that they occupy an unexceptional location in the Universe and may infer statistical properties of like observers from this assumption.

To me, the WAP seems trivial, SAP 3 and PoM may well be right, and the rest seems absurd.

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[Dr.Oogkloot]

Oldenbarnevelt:
I agree about WAP, SAP3 (SAP3 is very likely I think, for other reasons) and POM. I don't think FAP is absurd in the sense that it isn't true, but it does seem absurd to just assume it as a principle.
It was "invented" by Tipler in the context of the Omega Point theory, I think. He thinks it's necessarily true, not just a hypothesis; something about the boundary conditions of the universe, FAP has to be true for the Omega Point to exist and the Omega Point is what creates the universe, something like that. Never really understood what he meant.

BTW, FAP has also been called the Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle, or CRAP

[Ecthy]

Hi

[Rogan Josh]

Do you know the Author? Have you ever met Weinberg? I have.

He is one of the most obnoxious men alive (after Gell-man of course), who thinks that just because he has a Nobel Prize in physics he is entitled to carp on about any subject he likes with the pretence of being an 'expert'. If you have ever read his book ''Facing Up : Science and Its Cultural Adversaries' you will know what I mean.

[Oldenbarnevelt]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
Do you know the Author? Have you ever met Weinberg? I have.

He is one of the most obnoxious men alive (after Gell-man of course), who thinks that just because he has a Nobel Prize in physics he is entitled to carp on about any subject he likes with the pretence of being an 'expert'. If you have ever read his book ''Facing Up : Science and Its Cultural Adversaries' you will know what I mean.

Thanks for your shining example of an ad hominem.

Even if Weinberg is the smartaleckiest person in the world (which I doubt) -- what does your having met him have to do with it?

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[Buck Birdseed]

Whenever I look at this thread I always think back to one of my favourite Pratchett quotes, from Hogfather:

"Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like `Cosmic' and `Chaos' in the titles.

The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a `Fill in name here' nature, secretly believes to be true. "

[Dauphin]

The strong principle has no basis IMO. I am of the view that the universe is as it is because it just is.

The weak principle is true, my existence has certain pre-requisites, (but this of course does not mean those pre-requisites had to be there). In effect it is a statement of conditional probability. Given that I exist, what are the chances of the universe being in the state they are.

I do subscribe to the IAM principle, and will until I am disproven, at which point I won't be bothered about being wrong.

I think the resolution of the Many Worlds Theory will have deep implications on an intelligent designer. If this is the only reality, then intelligent desing is far more likely than if every possibility was manifest sometime, somewhere.

[Provost Harrison]

Do you ever have a day off Logical Realist? It's all bull****, I don't really concern myself with disproving the points of creationism, it is such an exasperating, and frankly pointless process.