Cosmologic philosophy: anthropic principle opinion (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 11, 2019, 18:51 (1809 days ago) @ David Turell

Cannot be used for multiverse arguments:

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/12/is-anthropic-principle-scientific.html

"I should add that to the extent that anthropic arguments are being used in physics, they do not usually draw on the existence of human life specifically. They more generally use the existence of certain physical preconditions that are believed to be necessary for life, such as a sufficiently complex chemistry or sufficiently large structures.

"So, the anthropic principle is neither unscientific, nor is it in general useless. But then why is the anthropic principle so controversial? It is controversial because it is often brought up by physicists who believe that we live in a multiverse, in which our universe is only one of infinitely many. In each of these universes, the laws of nature can be slightly different. Some may allow for life to exist, some may not.

"If you believe in the multiverse, then the anthropic principle can be reformulated to say that the probability we find ourselves in a universe that is not hospitable to life is zero. In the multiverse, the anthropic principle then becomes a statement about the probability distribution over an ensemble of universes. And for multiverse people, that’s an important quantity to calculate. So the anthropic principle smells controversial because of this close connection to the multiverse.

"However, the anthropic principle is correct regardless of whether or not you believe in a multiverse. In fact, the anthropic principle is a rather unsurprising and pretty obvious constraint on the properties that the laws of nature must have. The laws of nature must be so that they allow our existence. That’s what the anthropic principle says, no more and no less."

Comment: a perfect point. No real evidence for a multiverse, just a lot of harebrained distortion of logic. Got to get rid of God and all the logic in fine tuning somehow.