Comments on: Mind bending discussion of life, the universe, and everything

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:43:16 +0000

I’m with Greg. The Strong Anthropic Principle seems to be teleological.

This was especially annoying,

‘On the other hand, if there is no multiverse, where does that leave physicists? “If there is only one universe,” Carr says, “you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”’

Ugh.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:53:23 +0000

I think the anthropic principle is kind of a ridiculous notion. The universe appears ideally adapted to our existence because we are a product of that universe. Of course our environment appears ideal for our survival, we are the product of eons of evolution taking place in that environment!

By: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:08:29 +0000

There's another interesting theory, mostly the work of Stuart Kauffman, that predicts that a tendency to create complexity is built into the universe, though not predictable by the basic laws of physics alone (this is not mysticism, but an appeal to the existence of self-organizing systems that generate new levels of law-like behavior obedient to, but not predictable by the laws of physics). If this is true, then the probability of something like life existing is relatively high (or at least not ridiculously low) in any universe with an energy gradient that's not flat.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:38:04 +0000

I guess which theory you prefer depends on where you prefer the human species to be

By: Tom Marcinko

Tom Marcinko — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:52:00 +0000

Interesting how the anthropic principle seems to put the human species in the center of creation, then the multiverse theory comes along and once again we’re kicked back to the outskirts of Existence.