Absolute proof against the multiverse

[leroy]

Nobody here grants any of these things.
So you will be arguing with thin air if you limit yourself to that.

As I said before, many scientists grant those things, including Hawkins and Dawkins, nearly all scientists grant that the universe is FT and as far as I know the multiverse anthropic principle is the dominant view amoung secular scientists.


But nobody is making an argument from authority, if you personally disagree with these scientists feel free to do so.

 

[columbus]

Disagree.

If you are playing poker and you get 100 royal flushes in a row, you would be 100% justified in saying that it could have not happened by chance.

This seems a regular problem with creationists, poor math.
I don't know what the odds of 100 royal flushes in a row are. But suppose it's 1/10^25th.
If you play 10^27th hands, you're 99% likely to get them at some point.
Not 100%, but still very very likely.
Tom

 

[sayak83]

[

As I said before, many scientists grant those things, including Hawkins and Dawkins, nearly all scientists grant that the universe is FT and as far as I know the multiverse anthropic principle is the dominant view amoung secular scientists.


But nobody is making an argument from authority, if you personally disagree with these scientists feel free to do so.

You have got their ideas wrong.
Anyways, I too am a scientist and read the science directly and not popular expositions of it.

 

[ChristineM]

.
This thread is only applicable for those who grant that the universe is FT and claim that the multiverse anthropic principle is a better explanation that design.

So what you are saying is you are making statements on a public thread which is false, delusion or nonsense and you won't accept any argument.

 

[`mud]

I see the Arabic thoughts of an Arab mind of Moses' thoughts of a new `god` transplanted to the Halls of Rome. And Saul's Jesus going along for the trip. Finely tuned my arse !

 

[Thinking Homer]

Some atheists/naturalists use the multiverse hypothesis to explain the fine tuning of the universe. Even though atheist tend to admit that the multiverse hypothesis is not 100% satisfactory they argue that it is a better explanation than design.

In this post I will try to provide evidence that disproves the multiverse hypothesis.

Some points for clarifying:

A) I won't refute the idea that there is a multiverse, I will refute the idea that the multiverse hypothesis explains the fine tuning of the universe.

B) I am talking about type 2 multiverses

: arguments against the multiverse hypothesis:

1 there is no evidence that there are other universes

2 the hypothesis is completely ad hoc. one can use the multiverse hypothesis to explain away any inconfortable evidence.
For example a creationist can argue that in some universes radioactive elements decayed faster in the last 6,000 years .allowing for a young earth that looks old. We happen to live in such universe.

3 current multiverse models (eternal inflation, string theory etc) even if true would require fine tuning so they wouldn't solve the fine tuning problem. For example eternal inflation requieres an even lower entropy.

4 ironically the multiverse hypothesis entails that some universes where created by an inteligent designer. If the multiverse hypothesis is true and if there are potentially infinite some of these universes would be universes created by intelligent designers.
Some universes would produce very intelligent beings who would create universes (ether actual universes or simulations) so even if we grant that there is a multiverse we might live in a designed universe. A single intelligent civilization can create millions of artificial universes so these artifitial universes would probably be more abundant than "natural universes" so the default hypothesis should be that we live in an artificial universe.

....
This are good arguments against the multiverses hypothesis but none of these objection is devastating.
.….

Here is a devastating objection:

5 Boltzmann's brain paradox: we live in a very big universe with many stars and galaxies, a simple universe as big as our solar system would require less fine tuning; and therefore small universes would be vastly more abundant Roger Penrose calculated that there would be 10^630 simple universes, for every big universe like ours. Given that we obverve a big universe we are clearly not a random member of the multiverse.

But it gets more interesting, in the set of
10^630 universes there would be millions of universes in which observers are hallucinating or dreaming that they live in a big complex universe with many galaxies and stars. It is statistically vastly more likely that you live in a simple universe with a single star and a single planet, that you live inside this planet in a psychiatric hospital and that you created your own reality in your mind in which you think (hallucinate) that there are many galaxies and many stars. (This forum, your memories, your friends etc. Would also be part of this hallucination.)

Statistically speaking this would be the best and more probable explanation for why you observe many stars and galaxies

It gets worst, as Boltzmann noted, you don't even need a star nor a planet nor a physical body to make this observation; a single brain that comes in to existence as a consequence of a random fluctuation can appear with the illusion of having a memory a phisical body, an account in this forum who also imagines itselve in a big universe. These brains are Boltzmann brains.

This is known as the Boltzmann brain paradox. If we grant that there is a multiverse and that our universe is just a random member of such multiverse it follows that you are a Boltzmann brain.

this is an absurd conclusion because under this conclusion all the evidence for a multiverse that might excist would also be an illusion. We can drop the multiverse hypothesis one the bases of Reductio ad absurdum this logical principle says that any model that leads to a logical contradiction most be dropped .

This objection completely devastates the multiverse hypothesis
.....

Unless and until an atheist can provide a devastating objection against intelligent design we are justified in affirming that design is a better explanation than the multiverse hypothesis.

Richard Dawkin's perspective on the origin of life, is that matter + time + chance is sufficient to explain the complexity of living organisms that we observe around us. When the creationists told him how unlikely the chances are of that happening, Dawkins proposed the multiverse theory (which no theoretical physicist takes seriously by the way), to counter the improbable odds. What Dawkins also fails to explain is that matter + time +chance conforms to preexisting laws of physics, which happened to be there from the very start.

I am sure you are familiar with the Paley's watch analogy. If you come across something as complex as a watch, your first impression is that there was an intelligent mind behind its creation. However in Dawkin's book, "The blind Watchmaker" he writes, "the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics.... natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life."

Physicist Stephen Barr's response to this is hilarious:
"What Dawkins does not seem to appreciate is that his blindmaker is something even more remarkable than Paley's watches. Paley finds a "watch" and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches and feels that he has completely answered Paley's point. But that is absurd. How can a factory that makes watches be less in need of an explanation than the watches themselves?"

 

[`mud]

The bible and the Cosmos don't ever mesh !

 

[leroy]

This seems a regular problem with creationists, poor math.
I don't know what the odds of 100 royal flushes in a row are. But suppose it's 1/10^25th.
If you play 10^27th hands, you're 99% likely to get them at some point.
Not 100%, but still very very likely.
Tom

Sure and keeping up with the analogy, the probabilities of “dreaming” or “hallucinating” that you got 100 royal flushes in a row are less than 10^25

So if you ever observe yourself obtaining 100 royal flushes and you don’t what to invoke an intelligent designer, your default answer should be that you are hallucinatin or dreaming.



The point is that given that we observe a big finely tuned and improbable universe and given that you don’t like to invoke an intelligent designer, your default answer should be that we live in a much simpler and less finely tuned universe and your observations of a finely tuned universe are just a hallucination or a dream. This is the botlzam brain paradox.

Soon you will wake up in your simple and not FT world and wonder about a strange dream in which you where living in a big and FT universe and participating in a forum discussing about this issue.



Or to put it this way, given a multiverse with potentially infinite universes, there would be observers that live in simple universes (perhaps universes with 1 star and 1 planet)

Some of these observers would “dream” or “hallucinate” that they live in a complex universe with many stars and many galaxies

These observers would be vastly more abundant than observers who actually live in big FT universe with many stars and galaxies.

In other words, for every individual that actually gets 100 royal flushes in a row, there would be trillions of individuals that dream about having 100 royal flushes.

 

[ChristineM]

As I said before, many scientists grant those things, including Hawkins and Dawkins, nearly all scientists grant that the universe is FT and as far as I know the multiverse anthropic principle is the dominant view amoung secular scientists.

But nobody is making an argument from authority, if you personally disagree with these scientists feel free to do so.

Hawking didn't agree the universe was fine tuned. To say so is a misrepresentation of his paper in which he says (to paraphrase) that given near infinite universes at least one could have the conditions to host life.

Ive not seen dawkins mention fine tuning, please provide a link to one of his scientific papers in which he makes this strange statement.

 

[shunyadragon]

Well that is because I made the thread with the assumption that the participants are already familiar with the concept of FT, that understand the argument as typically presented by theists and that they would ether agree or disagree on whether if design isa a better explanation than the MV Hypothesis for the fine tuning of the universe.

Neither ID nor 'Fine Tuning' are viable falsifiable hypothesis as far as science is concerned. The anthropic principle and its variations represent philosophical assumption and not explanatory science. Fine Tuning is based IF theological/philosophical statements and not science.

This paragraph describes the multiverse explanation (also called multiverse antropic principle) which I argue that design is a better explanation. .

Possible naturalistic explanations

There are fine tuning arguments that are naturalistic.[29][page needed] As modern cosmology developed, various hypotheses have been proposed. One is an oscillatory universe or a multiverse, where fundamental physical constants are postulated to resolve themselves to random values in different iterations of reality.[30] Under this hypothesis, separate parts of reality would have wildly different characteristics. In such scenarios, the appearance of fine-tuning is explained as a consequence of the weak anthropic principle and selection bias(specifically survivor bias) that only those universes with fundamental constants hospitable to life (such as the universe we observe) would have living beings emerge and evolve capable of contemplating the questions of origins and of fine-tuning. All other universes would go utterly unbeheld by any such beings.

Multiverse
Main article: Multiverse
The Multiverse hypothesis proposes the existence of many universes with different physical constants, some of which are hospitable to intelligent life (see multiverse: anthropic principle). Because we are intelligent beings, it is unsurprising that we find ourselves in a hospitable universe if there is such a multiverse. The Multiverse hypothesis is therefore thought to provide an elegant explanation of the finding that we exist despite the required fine-tuning. (See [31] for a detailed discussion of the arguments for and against this suggested explanation.)

The multiverse idea has led to considerable research into the anthropic principle and has been of particular interest to particle physicists, because theories of everything do apparently generate large numbers of universes in which the physical constants vary widely. As yet, there is no evidence for the existence of a multiverse, but some versions of the theory do make predictions that some researchers studying M-theory and gravity leaks hope to see some evidence of soon.[32] Some multiverse theories are not falsifiable, thus scientists may be reluctant to call any multiverse theory "scientific". UNC-Chapel Hill professor Laura Mersini-Houghton claims that the WMAP cold spot may provide testable empirical evidence for a parallel universe,[33] although this claim was recently refuted as the WMAP cold spot was found to be nothing more than a statistical artifact.[34] Variants on this approach include Lee Smolin's notion of cosmological natural selection, the Ekpyrotic universe, and the Bubble universe theory.

Critics of the multiverse-related explanations argue that there is no independent evidence that other universes exist. Some criticize the inference from fine-tuning for life to a multiverse as fallacious,[35] whereas others defend it against that challenge.[36]

Top-down cosmology

Stephen Hawking, along with Thomas Hertog of CERN, proposed that the Universe's initial conditions consisted of a superposition of many possible initial conditions, only a small fraction of which contributed to the conditions we see today.[37] According to their theory, it is inevitable that we find our Universe's "fine-tuned" physical constants, as the current Universe "selects" only those past histories that led to the present conditions. In this way, top-down cosmology provides an anthropic explanation for why we find ourselves in a universe that allows matter and life, without invoking the ontic existence of the Multiverse."

The possible multiverse is not equivalent and there is no relationship to the anthropic principle. Richard Dawkins description of the anthropic principle justifies the multiverse from his perspective

 

[leroy]

So what you are saying is you are making statements on a public thread which is false, delusion or nonsense and you won't accept any argument.

The statement that the universe is FT is not false, at most you could say that we are not 100% sure if the statement is true, but most scientists grant it as true.

I just what to keep the thread on topic, this is thread is for those who grant that the universe is FT and the goal is to discuss which explanation is better, design or the “multiverse anthropic principle”.

If you what to discuss on whether if the universe is FT or not, feel free to open a new thread, justify your assertion and I will be happy to participate in that thread.

 

[exchemist]

Disagree.

If you are playing poker and you get 100 royal flushes in a row, you would be 100% justified in saying that it could have not happened by chance.

But we are not playing poker.

Suppose you have a thermometer, accurate to 0.000001deg C. You wake up one morning and observe the outside temperature is 23.456789C. What are the chances of those digits appearing in the decimal part of the reading? One in a million. So very "unlikely". But this decimal portion of the temperature, measured to 6 decimal places, must have a value, and the one observed is as likely as any other combination of digits.

 

[exchemist]

As I said before, many scientists grant those things, including Hawkins and Dawkins, nearly all scientists grant that the universe is FT and as far as I know the multiverse anthropic principle is the dominant view amoung secular scientists.


But nobody is making an argument from authority, if you personally disagree with these scientists feel free to do so.

It's Hawking, not Hawkins.

Can you support your statement that nearly all scientists grant the universe is fine-tuned? I do not believe you - please provide some evidence.

 

[leroy]

It's Hawking, not Hawkins.

Can you support your statement that nearly all scientists grant the universe is fine-tuned? I do not believe you - please provide some evidence.https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1411/1411.7304.pdf

sure:

"The Fine Tuning Ques)on “There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists”, writes Paul Davis [3], “that the universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned' for life”. Similarly, Stephen Hawking has noted: The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron [fine structure constant] and the ra.o of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life [4]. Another crucial point is ar.culated by Alexei Tsvelik [5]: [since] the number of exis.ng life-imposing condi.ons by far exceeds the number of constants, their fulfillment could not be achieved by fine tuning of these constants and required also the right choice of the fundamental principles of physical laws."
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1411/1411.7304.pdf

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1411/1411.7304.pdf

 

[shunyadragon]

What we are trying to determine is which hypothesis represents a better explanation for the Fine tuning of the universe:

Multiverse hypothesis: (weak atrophic principle)

Or

Inteligent Design

Nobody is claiming that these are the only 2 alternatives, nor that these are mutually exclusive (both could be wrong, both could be correct)

The Multiverse is based on a scientific hypothesis grounded in the present scientific knowledge of our universe and math models,

Fine Tuning is based on IF theological/philosophical assumptions and not a falsifiable hypothesis.

 

[leroy]

But we are not playing poker.

Suppose you have a thermometer, accurate to 0.000001deg C. You wake up one morning and observe the outside temperature is 23.456789C. What are the chances of those digits appearing in the decimal part of the reading? One in a million. So very "unlikely". But this decimal portion of the temperature, measured to 6 decimal places, must have a value, and the one observed is as likely as any other combination of digits.

That is the point; nobody would argue that the thermometer shows that temperature by chance. The fact that the thermometer shows exactly the temperature that we observe implies that someone calibrated the thermometer in such a way that it would produce a combination of numbers that corresponds to the temperature.


Of all the values that a thermometer could have shown it happened to show a value that corresponds to the actual temperature, this is obviously an example of fine tuning, and design would be the best explanation.

 

[leroy]

Neither ID nor 'Fine Tuning' are viable falsifiable hypothesis as far as science is concerned. The anthropic principle and its variations represent philosophical assumption and not explanatory science. Fine Tuning is based IF theological/philosophical statements and not science.

e

As I said before, your straw man understanding of FT is not falsifiable. But the actual concept is scientific falsifiable and widely accepted by scientist, I already provided sources.

 

[`mud]

There's no word salad in this salad, and no olives !

 

[ChristineM]

The statement that the universe is FT is not false, at most you could say that we are not 100% sure if the statement is true, but most scientists grant it as true.

I just what to keep the thread on topic, this is thread is for those who grant that the universe is FT and the goal is to discuss which explanation is better, design or the “multiverse anthropic principle”.

If you what to discuss on whether if the universe is FT or not, feel free to open a new thread, justify your assertion and I will be happy to participate in that thread.

It is a guess based on ignorance. Nothing more, nothing less.

So no discussion, no alternative hypothesis, no argument, fair enough.
None are better, both are just guesses.

 

[ChristineM]

That is the point; nobody would argue that the thermometer shows that temperature by chance. The fact that the thermometer shows exactly the temperature that we observe implies that someone calibrated the thermometer in such a way that it would produce a combination of numbers that corresponds to the temperature.


Of all the values that a thermometer could have shown it happened to show a value that corresponds to the actual temperature, this is obviously an example of fine tuning, and design would be the best explanation.

The numbers are defined by man, it is hardly surprising the correspond to C or F or K. Oh look, said temperature can be 3 different sets of numbers...all correct.

It is an example of the ingenuity of man