Dean's World

How about starting with a "Weaker Anthropic Principle", stating that a universe can be constructed so that intelligent life may evolve? We know it's true because we're here. Going from here to knowing for sure that any universe MUST provide for the possibility of intelligent life seems a stretch, given the present state of our knowledge. And to go further by stating that not only must a universe be constructed to provide for the possibility of intelligent life but that every universe must generate intelligent life, sooner or later, seems wildly unfounded.

But what's a universe without intelligence? It's like a martini without an olive, a banana split without a cherry. Pointless.

It seems to me that the weak anthropic principle is something of a tautology. "I'm here, therefore it must be possible for me to be here." Yeah, okay, BFD.

The strong principle seems, well, purely speculative, not to mention a little egocentric: "My being here was inevitable," or, "The universe exists in order for me to be here," depending on how you view it.

Well, according to Christianity, the universe exists for the sake of mankind. How about this, then:

The universe would not exist if not for life?

The Strong Anthropic Principle certainly does not require a "designer" or any level of faith. It might incorporate one but it doesn't require one at all. It simply suggests that the rules of the universe must be constructed in such a way that the developmenet of intelligent life is as predictable and unavoidable at the formation of stars, planets, and galaxies.

You can question why the cosmos was constructed in such a way, and invoke a designer to explain it, but it's not required.

Oops, in my comment above when I said "I gather the way the SAP is useful..." I meant the WAP. I don't know of any way the SAP is useful.

Guys: the Strong Anthropic Principle is definitely interesting, and definitely does not require a designer.

Look: if I formulated something I called the "Strong Galactic Principle," and I stated that the rules of the universe must require the formation of galaxies, would you find that "uninteresting?" Or would you find it possibly useful to understanding cosmology, that these observed phenomenon of galaxies must exist because the rules of the universe require that they come into existence? All those galaxies can't just be coincidence, can they? By sheer luck and random chance they came into being?

If I have a "strong stellar principle" which states that stars WILL form, am I invoking a designer or saying something uninteresting? A "weak stellar principle" would say that MAYBE stars would form and maybe they never would. The fact that we have so many trillion stars suggests that stars aren't merely random formations but that the rules of the universe are constructed in such a way that their formation is inevitable.

The strong anthropic principle is no different, for it states that the rules of the universe are such that intelligent life MUST eventually come into existence, just as predictably as galaxies, stars, and planets will.

The SAP is actually far more interesting than the WAP, for it suggests that there must be cosmological rules in place which we do not yet fully understand but which cause intelligent life to exist. It's also a strong scientific theory, for it makes a bold prediction: there WILL be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

The Weak Anthropic Principle is weak in more ways than one. It states that life may or may not come into existence by random chance, sort of like finding a rock formation that happens to look like a face. It makes tentative predictions at best, and indeed virtually requires that intelligent life be fairly rare, or even extremely rare, since unlike galaxies, stars, planets, asteroids, and atoms, the rules of the universe do not predict its existence as inevitable.

Maor: Precisely so, which is why the Strong Anthropic Principle is potentially useful to theoretical physicists, cosmologists, and molecular biologists: the rules of the universe must require that this phenomenon will come into existence as predictably as stars, planets, comets, and so on. So far we don't really know what those rules are, but by predicting that they must exist we can start trying to figure out what those rules must be.

Far from what others are saying, the Weak Anthropic Principle is actually more likely to invoke some sort of force outside the universe or the known rules of cosmology. By suggesting that intelligent life is just a freak accident, they're suggesting it might even require something outside the universe and the normal rules of cosmology to force it into existence.

Both principles do have some theological implications, but the WAP actually has stronger ones in my mind.

Dean:

I agree SAP does not require a designer, though it's often used to argue for the existence of one.

There's empirical evidence that tends to prove that the rules dictate that formation of galaxies and stars is inevitable. It's extremely difficult to find such evidence regarding intelligent life, because while there are billions of visible stars and galaxies in our light-cone, there is only one known instance of intelligent life (assuming you define it as human-level intelligence and leave out dolphins and such).

Of course, the other major difference is that galaxies and stars aren't required to observe that galaxies and stars exist. But if the universe is infinite, then the WAP actually proves the SAP.

and Earth doesn't seem to have something very special.
There isn't nearly enough knowledge of other (extrasolar) planets to make this statement. But the debate is really about the development of intelligent life, which has only been around a very small fraction of the time life has been around. And since it only happened once, we don't know how improbable its development is.

Dave: Was writing while you were posting that. I'll only add that the SAP is useful because it makes a prediciton, and one that can be tested. It's one that mathematicians, cosmologists, and biologists can use to start trying to tease out what the rules must be.

We have pretty good theories of stellar formation, galactic formation, and so on. Those theories all virtually require that the rules of the universe MUST be set up certain ways. Teasing out what those rules are is interesting and useful. The SAP is no different.

The weak anthropic principle, as someone else has pointed out, is simply a circular argument that says an "observed" universe must have an "observer." As written and commonly understood, it has the implication that the "observer" must reside within the universe itself and therefore the universe must have conditions amenable to the evolution of intelligent life. In that sense it is correct to describe such a "principle" as a tautology, which makes it of questionable scientific value.

The weak anthropic principle has a fatal flaw if you suppose that an "observed" universe is observable from the outside, or that an observer can enter that universe from the outside. Then there is no need for the observed universe to have developed life for it to be observable, so any random conditions could apply. So the weak anthropic principal can be shown to be fallacious if an external observer is allowed, and since I can think of no compelling reason that an external observer cannot exist, I can't agree that the weak anthropic principle must hold true.

The strong anthropic principle still reeks of dogma to me. Again the possible existence of an outside observer can be applied and if that is possible, then the strong anthropic principle has no more weight than the weak principle.

So all that you need to show that neither the strong nor the weak must hold true is that an external observer exist.

I guess you can get into a semantic discussion about what the word "universe" means. You could say that any universe that is observable must be considered a subset of the universe that is doing the observing then you can put these principles back into play, but to do that I would think you need to be very careful about how you define the word "universe." Because now you have pretty much defined "universe" to be some coherent reality that must contain observers, and now both the strong and the weak converge into a definition of universe that must include intelligent beings. In other words, both the strong and weak principles just become rewordings of the definition of the word "universe" itself.

Which really takes us back to the oldest question in the existential realm. "If tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Or to put it more cosmologically, does existence itself require experience for it to mean anything? Can you even say something exists if there is nobody there to see it? This gets very metaphysical at this point and I'm not sure that our current physics is yet able to answer such questions.

Sean,

The weak anthropic principle has a fatal flaw if you suppose that an "observed" universe is observable from the outside, or that an observer can enter that universe from the outside. I can think of no compelling reason that an external observer cannot exist
Exist where? Do you have any evidence of something existing "outside" the universe, or that such a thing is even possible? You do not. This is not much different than positing a Creator outside physics.

In any case, even if there was any evidence such a thing were possible, it's not relevant to our situation, as we evolved within the universe and while the WAP might not apply to an "outside" observer, it does apply to us.

I think Eric and Sean's comments both highlight an important point: WAP is only meaningful within the framework of accepted physics. As soon as you step outside of that framework, WAP loses all relevance. But then, so does all physical law, which makes such excursions of questionable value.

Dean: I'll only add that the SAP is useful because it makes a prediciton, and one that can be tested.

It's a good point; belief is SAP isn't founded on empirical evidence, but SAP is a scientific statement since it is falsifiable. I think SAP would be disproven in a finite universe, but I think it will turn out that the universe is actually infinite and thus SAP proves WAP or is operationally equivalent to it.

Maybe we could postulate a finite SAP: that the light-cone we exist in is constructed such that intelligent life must arise.

If we want to do as the drunk under the street lamp, and look for our keys there where there is more light, instead of trying to find a flashlight, and looking for our keys where we lost them, in other words, if we pre-determine that a purely naturalistic explanation is the only one possible then yes, looking about for an Other, or any signs thereof would be pointless.

But that still would not invalidate an extradimensional observer.

Nor, would it remove the problem of odds from evolution. If we arrived here by purely naturalistic means, it still does not make sense to choose the means that is so wildly improbable that no one but the angel in charge of really huge numbers could begin to comprehend their vastness. The probability would be that there was another naturalistic solution that we had not figured out yet.

I still think you guys aren't getting it. You're anthropomorphizing the principles under question, and trying to make the question of a creator part of it, which is useless.

Look:

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Strong Stellar Theory: The rules of the universe are probably set up in such a way that stars will form.

Use for the Strong Stellar Theory: we may begin exploring what rules cause stars to form. Much of astronomy is based on exactly that presumption--that the formation of stars is inevitable, and we need merely discover what those rules are to understand them better. Astronomers and theoretical physicists often devote their lives to the Strong Stellar Theory.

Of what use would a Weak Stellar Theory be?

Let's pretend we lived in a world with such dense cloud cover that no one has ever seen a star. Could mathematical rules be formulated to predict their existence anyway? Yes, just as Stephen Hawking and others proved mathematically that black holes must exist before one was ever observed. So let's say observers on our cloud-covered world manage to send up a probe, and prove the existence of one star, the one their planet circled around. Now they could have a debate: we've proved the existence of one. Are the rules of the universe such that we can definitively say there will be more?

The Strong Stellar Theory would say yes, there have to be more, and we would begin trying to both (a) empirically prove it, and (b) tease out what the exact rules of stellar formation are.

The Weak Stellar Theory would be a rather thin, "well maybe there are more stars, maybe there aren't. Empirically we don't know, and can only speculate."

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Strong Atomic Theory: The rules of the universe are such that atoms simply have to exist.

Use for the theory: we can begin trying to empirically prove they exist, and to tease out the rules for what causes atoms to form and what rules govern their behavior.

Weak atomic theory: well, we've proved the existence of one type of atom. We can't predict if there's more than one type, and have no further predictions.

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Strong Biotic Theory: The rules of the universe must be set up in such a way that life WILL form.

Use for the theory: begin looking for empirical evidence of life's existence, and begin trying to tease out what the rules are that cause life to form.

Weak biotic theory: life might exist. If you observe it in one place, that doesn't mean it's anywhere else, and we have no predictions about it.

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Strong Anthropic Theory: The rules of the cosmos are such that the formation of intelligent life is as inevitable as the formation of planets, stars, and galaxies.

Use for the Strong Anthropic Theory: we begin looking for empirical evidence of intelligent life, and, attempt to tease out what the exact rules are that govern the formation of the phenomenon.

Weak Anthropic Theory: Well we've observed it once, here on this planet. Maybe it exists elsewhere, we dunno, and we have no predictions.

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Get it now? This isn't just philosophical candy. This is the stuff of genuine theories and genuine areas of exploration for scientists.

Were I a molecular biologist I'd make the study of at least the "Strong Biotic Theory" a part of my life's work, and probably look to team up with theoretical physicists and mathematicians to try to tease out what the rules are that cause the formation of life. And the "Weak Biotic Principle" would only cause me to snear.

Well, yeah and no.

I have here a potato chip that looks distinctly like Richard Nixon. The Strong Potato Chip Face Theory would state that potato chips that look like Nixon have to come into existence. The Weak Potato Chip Face Theory would say that such potato chips might come into existence, but they're just a product of random chance and the fact that so many potato chips are made. It is unremarkable if sooner or later one of them shows up that looks like Tricky Dick.

The Weak Anthropic Principle would be much like that: random chance might throw things together in such a way that life forms, but it almost certainly won't be common, and intelligent life less common still.

Notably, the Intelligent Design theorists and the creationists rely heavily on the Weak Anthropic Principle. They say the random formation of life is so mind-bogglingly unlikely that something operating outside the rules of the known universe must have created it.

The Strong Anthropic Principle blows most of their arguments out of the water. It says life's an inevitability, as is intelligent life. The only way you can invoke a higher power there is to say the higher power set up the rules of physics, and then the question is merely existential.

Yes, but I note again: human beings predicted the existence of Black Holes BEFORE anyone had ever observed one. We predicted the existence of atoms BEFORE we had proved they existed.

Your duck-billed platypus theory would have to be based on certain mathematical principles that predicted the existence of duck-billed platypuses even without ever seeing one. Otherwise it's just a fantasy.

I think the confusion you point to there, Robert, is in the linquistic vagueness of the word "must."

You're using and reading the word in the imperative form, as if someone said, "Hey you! Universe! Behave in this way! Look lively soldier and do exactly what you're told!"

The Anthropic Principle(s) are using "must" in the sense of drawing inferences. My wife calls me on the phone and tells me she's on her way home and mentions she's low on gas. I notice she takes longer to get home than normal: "she must have stopped for gas" is my conclusion. "Must" is not an order, I didn't force her to stop for gas. It's an inference I've drawn.

The Strong Anthropic Principle is that the universe must be governed by rules that make intelligent life an inevitability. We can use it as a guideline in exploring the mathematics and the empiricism of figuring out what causes the phenomenon of life, and intelligent life at that.

The Weak Anthropic Principle is another inference we can draw, it's just less rigorous: whatever laws govern the universe must make life possible, but they don't mandate its existence any more than they mandate the existence of potato chips shaped like Richard Nixon.

Not so, says, Edwin Hubbell. It's expanding. Which means, its been expanding. Which means it had a fixed beginning from which to expand.


No, no, amigo. If fixed means a body at rest then a body at rest cannot activate an expanding universe 'cuz it is at rest and not just sleeping.

Ergo, any such principle must be an active and dynamic principle. And that is that with which the sumptin' outta Genesis in the Old Testament describes.

I don't know about McK, but Capt. Yossarian would say both the SAP and WAP are bunkum because it is an attempt to use benign language to impose itself on what appears appears to be a self-organizing wild and chaotic universe.

He is a free and secure citizen of this earth, for he is attached to a chain that is long enough to make all areas of the earth accessible to him, and yet only so long that nothing can pull him over the edges of the earth. At the same time, however, he is also a free and secure citizen of heaven, for he is also attached to a similarly calculated heavenly chain. Thus, if he wants to get down to earth, he is choked by the heavenly collar and chain; if he wants to get into heaven, he is choked by the earthly one. And in spite of this he has all the possibilities, and feels that it is so; indeed, he even refuses to attribute the whole thing to a mistake in the original chaining.

-Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks

Don't rightly know if it's truly related to the topic at hand, but it sure made me LOL

Thanks Dean, for going through the SAP/WAP thingamabobs. No real commments as of yet from this quarter.

McKiernan: Tell Yossarian that if the universe were that chaotic he likely wouldn't exist at all, even as a fictional character.

Dave: Bear in mind that the anthropic principles were devised by theoretical physicists who spend their lives studying the fiercely intricate math that governs the universe. They did not come up with these principles because they wanted to fantasize, they came up with them to help them establish a theoretical framework to help them tease out the rules of how certain things work.

They give us both the weak and the strong versions of the theory precisely because we have yet to find intelligent life outside of Earth. The WAP is an acknowledgement of that fact.

Indeed, that's why they're stated as Principles rather than Theories, because they're just a tool toward developing a theory of how life forms. We don't have any strong theories yet on how life forms. Just a lot of guesses.

The weak anthropic principle, as someone else has pointed out, is simply a circular argument that says an "observed" universe must have an "observer." As written and commonly understood, it has the implication that the "observer" must reside within the universe itself and therefore the universe must have conditions amenable to the evolution of intelligent life. In that sense it is correct to describe such a "principle" as a tautology, which makes it of questionable scientific value.

Somebody else is spreading a common falacy, you mean, the point that you've made was an observation that came from a single anthropic coincidence that was made by Robert Dicke before Fred Hoyle used it to make the kind of proven valuable predictions that you seem to think are of questionable value.

The point neglects that the anthropic implication gets compounded exponentially with each additional coincidence.

The point neglects that the anthropic coincidences are curiously balanced near exactly between diametrically opposing run-away tendencies, which is a LOT more significant than saying that the universe "must have conditions amenable to the evolution of intelligent life"

More like... the universe must be full of curiously balanced conditions in order for it to be amenable to the evolution of intelligent life.

The problem with the tautologous nature of the anthropic principle is that it is incomplete, it was taken from a flawed cosmological model. Fix Dirac's Large Numbers Hypothesis and you will **necessarily** complete and clarify the principle.

This is straight from the horses mouth, about halfway down the page, Dirac talks about this and you can get a feel for the line of thinking that he was using that has since been abandoned by science.

http://www.fdavidpeat.com/interviews/dirac.htm

Nowadays they call it "numerology"... thanks to quantum uncertainty, multiverses and Hartle-Hawking... but my understanding is that they are dead-wrong about all.

It's a number provided by nature and we should expect that a theory will someday provide a reason for it.
~ Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac ~

Dear God don't any of you have a job during the day :)

Love y'all. [ducks]

Let me say that reading all the comments here is quite interesting, but almost as hard for me to follow as The Xerox Effect on the Importance of Pre-Biotic Evolution (which sounds like a lot of bunk to me).

Kevin D,

If the universe were infinite it would indicate a creator-God?

No, exactly the opposite in fact. If the universe is infinite, the WAP proves the SAP without the need for a God (see above).

As you point out in a different way above, I think a stronger case can be made for the "need" for a divine Creator or Interferor that sets up the necessary conditions for our existence in the singular, finite universe, since the odds of life evolving in such a universe might actually be very low (though of course we can only observe it if it actually happens, which makes our existence seem gimmicky and unlikely to me).

But in an infinite singular universe, intelligent life is inevitable, since we know it happened, and therefore can happen, and anything that can happen in an infinite universe will happen, and thus God is unnecessary. Which is the way it ought to be, I think. As someone who believes in God, I don't want my faith trivialized with mere mundane scientific proof ;)

If the SAP is read to mean that life must evolve eventually, then how is that different from saying that the universe is itself alive? In other words, the moment of creation is essentially the laying of an egg. Life doesn't "evolve" from randomness, life was always part of the universe, woven into the very fabric of it. The egg may take a while to hatch, and the specific form of the resulting organisms may be indeterminite, but there is no "beginning" of life in such a universe, it's only a matter of organization and development.

Sean you have just laid your finger on why I am utterly undisturbed by the Creation Science and the Intelligent Design folks (who are clearly related, if not the same).

If you read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, or even Lincoln Barnett's The Universe and Dr. Einstein, you instantly realize something: that these men (Einstein and Hawking) engaged their whole lives with the question of origins, with the question of "what is God?" Even Carl Sagan said it in his introduction to "A Brief History of Time" -- he stated openly, as an atheist, that it was clear that Hawking was asking "what is God?" with this work.

As I said to Elizabeth not too long ago, at some level no matter how you look at it, it's turtles all the way down. So why not just ask these questions, and see where they lead us?

The above is what the anthropic principle is about:

An evolutionary leap is analogous to a big bang, and punctuated equilibrium is analogous to a "near"-static universe.

SEE the physical logic.

Traits or characteristics are "convolved" foward in this manner.

That's the universal connection that falls out of clarification of Dirac's Large Numbers Hypothesis.

Our high-energy contribution to this process is why we are here.

daf9:

I think more data is required. It's hard to draw any conclusions from a single universe containing a single planet inhabited by complex life forms.

Exactly. This is especially true when you realize via WAP that the single example is necessary for us to be able to observe any examples.

Rick R,

It's also arrogant to presume that the AP only applies to one spiral galaxy, the principle readily extends to all spiral galaxies that are on the same evolutionary "plane" as us.

Sure, but how do you know how likely intelligent life is in any of them? For all we know, intelligent life could be so unlikely that this is the only spiral galaxy in the universe that ever developed it. There's no evidence.

lol... about as "well established" as inflationary theory, the Band-Aid theory that was invented to explain the observed discrepansies in big bang theory, which, thanks to direct observational evidence is with a 99.9% level of confidence... DEAD!

Large Scale Anomalies of the Microwave Sky

Inflationary theory was ludicrous idea that used a isn't even necessary if the universe already has volume when a big bang occurs.

How simply obvious.

Sure, but how do you know how likely intelligent life is in any of them? For all we know, intelligent life could be so unlikely that this is the only spiral galaxy in the universe that ever developed it. There's no evidence.

How likely?... The physics, in conjuntion with the similarity, commonality and continuity in the evolutionary process indicates that life is *highly* "likely" on other spiral galaxies for the reasons that we are here.

The "preferred place and time" aspect of the principle indicates that this will limit life to a very thin layer that's on the same evolutionary plane as us.

This is a testable prediction that SETI will eventually confirm.

That's what theories do... they predict stuff that can be tested... like the anthropic principle has done many times in the past.

Dale,

There is an interpretation of the anthropic principle that doesn't include probabilities if there is only one possible universal configuration. This is the model that I hold to as supported by the flatness of the universe, which is the most natural configuration since this near-perfectly symmetrical configuration is also the most energy-efficient means for dissipating energy, because this means that tendency toward "heat-death" is most economically restricted to the most-even distribution of energy possible.

The universe actually expresses a grand scale natural preference toward the most economical form of energy dissipation, so if the second law of thermodynamics is telling us that the entropy of our expanding universe increases with every action, then the anthropic principle is telling us that this will occur by the most energy efficient means possible, since the flatness of the universe is one of the many coincidentally ecobalanced requirements of the principle.

If the second law of thermodynamics points the arrow of time, then the anthropic principle determines that time is maximized, in other words.

It should also be mentioned in this thread that an "inherent" anthropic constraint on the forces makes a statement about grand-unification, because it explains why the forces can't be unified if there is an inherent imbalance in the energy.

My understanding is that it is this inherent imbalance/asymmetry that keeps the effort moving perpetually toward an impossible reconciliation of this inherent inequity, that gets a little smaller each time that we have a big bang.

The longer that the dissipative process takes prior to a big bang, the smoother/flatter will be the result when it occurs.

Causality isn't violated because the normal breakdown of matter in our expanding universe is what releases the high-energy photons that interact with negative vaccum energy.... long story, and a lot of physics, but this causes a big bang.

... and time restarts.

Assuming that all of this last part is justified, this makes the anthropic principle the theory of everything, and the direct link to evolutionary theory makes the TOE the ToE.