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Aswad -> RE: Dinosaurs (8/14/2012 4:55:28 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
There is something slippery about your proposition. Perhaps you can help me understand it better.
I'll see what I can do. I can't nail the proposition to a cross, though.
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If there are other universes, and there may well be, different forms of life may have evolved under a different set of physical parameters, and so those different parameters are exquisitely narrow as well.
That is one of the possible interpretations, yes.
I should note I wasn't originally planning to deal with the exact meaning of the principle, but why not...
The basic sense of the anthropic principle is the truism that observers observe environments that allow observation to take place. The strongest sense is that only observable environments occur, hence anthropic, in that it posits that we provide the universe with its means and motive to exist, so to speak. This, of course, discounts the fact that a universe may well be a valid observer in its own right, and indeed probably constitutes the only timeless observer (which may well be a prerequisite to existence, as articulated in the original forms of the principle). It is our anthropocentrism that leads us to assume we humans are exalted, that it is our lives, rather than the lives of universes, that are necessary to observation.
When humanity is long gone, gravity will continue to provide temporally and spatially structured interactions in the universe, constituting a self sustaining set of pertubations. This, of course, is a form of computation similar to what the human brain does, and while the timescale seems too slow for us, the resultant mind (a term I'll use without qualification here) will perceive time in a manner that is appropriate to the speed with which its pertubations occur. As an amusing sidebar, the dimensionality change I referenced in another post would then be akin to the folding of the cortex, a stage of development where the interactions grow in complexity. Anyway, the self observation of the universe then serves to resolve superimposed states in a manner that gives substance to the universe without requiring the presence of life internal to it.
Long story short, the consciousness of the universe is itself, and its existence is this self-awareness.
Note, by the way, that I am not saying carbon based life. The parameters that support carbon based life are a subset of those that support chemical life, which is a subset of those that support potentially recognizeable life, in turn a subset of those that support a form of life at all, again a subset of those that result in universes having anything in common with ours. This last bit is where we have to keep in mind the fact that reality is stranger than we can comprehend. Even causality isn't a given, and that's an infinite parameter space from which to have one universe like this one. Of course, there can be several universes, which renders the question moot in the sense that we cannot infer anything from our universe if all the possible universes exist. The question is only of any serious interest if we only have one universe.
Touching again on parameter spaces, the usual discussion about parameter spaces can be treated by analogy. Let's say you have a computer with software that will simulate a universe accurately. You put some parameters into the software, and a universe plays out on your computer. This is the parameter space normally discussed, and it's a fairly large one, in which several possible values actually do not support any form of life (e.g. failure to result in a universe that has interactions of any sort in it is a possible outcome). However, if beings in the universes you simulate start thinking like we do, they will deduce how your software works by observing the behavior of the simulation from the inside. Their debate regarding the parameters you plugged into the software will be based on assumptions about the software itself. This would be physics. Yet, there's nothing to provide a reason for physics to be as it is at a fundamental level, either. You could swap the software on your computer, or even swap the computer itself. This is the larger parameter space, and they've nothing to constrain it below infinity. For that matter, they won't be able to conceive of most of the possibilities. We make a lot of assumptions, of which causality is probably the most fundamental (and the most trivial, but that's beside the point).
You peel back the onion layer by layer. First you have the parameter selection. Then you have the rules that give these parameters meaning. Then you have the rules that put those rules into place. And so on and so forth. Turtles all the way down, so to speak. At some point you reach a layer that is sufficient in itself, whether by absurdity (i.e. "that's just how it is"), or by some form of reentrancy, or by some sort of cause. This layer, we could call the god of our reality. Whether creation is intelligent, random or absurd, that's a wide-open question. That there is a terminal layer isn't a given, but it seems a fair bet at present. Indeed, science is pretty much based on discovering the resultant bundle of assumptions.
The assumption of creationism is that this terminal layer... well... ehyeh asher ehyeh.
It's self aware. And it likes life. This property is part of its character. Its nature. Its shape. The result of that shape is that a series of thoughts, if you will, make up a series of rules and parameters that result in one or more universes, of which one or more contain life, of which one is ours. An implication might be that we're going to stick around, but that's going pretty far out on a limb. I have plenty of daydreams whose characters I do not revisit. But regardless, the idea that a creator is responsible for reality itself is more a question of perspective than a matter for debate: God is ineffable. It's not that we can't say it. It's that we can't grasp it.
Whatever is at the core of things, the reason for existence itself, the very substance of existence, that is God.
What it is, however, this head of the pantheon, is most certainly up for debate. And for the most part, the debate will be on anything but solid ground.
Of course, the bulk of the creationists out there have a much less interesting and more anthropocentric debate going on, IMO.
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The anthropic principle holds that the fine tuning of this universe is not so remarkable. I doubt that a creationist would agree with that. What do you think?
I think most creationists lack a sufficiently reflected position to even begin to comment usefully.
I'm not sure I did, either, but hopefully it was at least more entertaining.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
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