Paul Davies has published an Op-Ed in the New York Times, about science and faith. Edge has put together a set of responses — by Jerry Coyne, Nathan Myhrvold, Lawrence Krauss, Scott Atran, Jeremy Bernstein, and me, so that’s some pretty lofty company I’m hob-nobbing with. Astonishingly, bloggers have also weighed in: among my regular reads, we find responses from Dr. Free-Ride, PZ, and The Quantum Pontiff. (Bloggers have much more colorful monikers than respectable folk.) Peter Woit blames string theory.
I post about this only with some reluctance, as I fear the resulting conversation is very likely to lower the average wisdom of the human race. Davies manages to hit a number of hot buttons right up front — claiming that both science and religion rely on faith (I don’t think there is any useful definition of the word “faith” in which that is true), and mentioning in passing something vague about the multiverse. All of which obscures what I think is his real point, which only pokes through clearly at the end — a claim to the effect that the laws of nature themselves require an explanation, and that explanation can’t come from the outside.
Personally I find this claim either vacuous or incorrect. Does it mean that the laws of physics are somehow inevitable? I don’t think that they are, and if they were I don’t think it would count as much of an “explanation,” but your mileage may vary. More importantly, we just don’t have the right to make deep proclamations about the laws of nature ahead of time — it’s our job to figure out what they are, and then deal with it. Maybe they come along with some self-justifying “explanation,” maybe they don’t. Maybe they’re totally random. We will hopefully discover the answer by doing science, but we won’t make progress by setting down demands ahead of time.
So I don’t know what it could possibly mean, and that’s what I argued in my response. Paul very kindly emailed me after reading my piece, and — not to be too ungenerous about it, I hope — suggested that I would have to read his book.
My piece is below the fold. The Edge discussion is interesting, too. But if you feel your IQ being lowered by long paragraphs on the nature of “faith” that don’t ever quite bother to give precise definitions and stick to them, don’t blame me.
***
Why do the laws of physics take the form they do? It sounds like a reasonable question, if you don’t think about it very hard. After all, we ask similar-sounding questions all the time. Why is the sky blue? Why won’t my car start? Why won’t Cindy answer my emails?
And these questions have sensible answers—the sky is blue because short wavelengths are Rayleigh-scattered by the atmosphere, your car won’t start because the battery is dead, and Cindy won’t answer your emails because she told you a dozen times already that it’s over but you just won’t listen. So, at first glance, it seems plausible that there could be a similar answer to the question of why the laws of physics take the form they do.
But there isn’t. At least, there isn’t any as far as we know, and there’s certainly no reason why there must be. The more mundane “why” questions make sense because they refer to objects and processes that are embedded in larger systems of cause and effect. The atmosphere is made of atoms, light is made of photons, and they obey the rules of atomic physics. The battery of the car provides electricity, which the engine needs to start. You and Cindy relate to each other within a structure of social interactions. In every case, our questions are being asked in the context of an explanatory framework in which it’s perfectly clear what form a sensible answer might take.
The universe (in the sense of “the entire natural world,” not only the physical region observable to us) isn’t like that. It’s not embedded in a bigger structure; it’s all there is. We are lulled into asking “why” questions about the universe by sloppily extending the way we think about local phenomena to the whole shebang. What kind of answers could we possibly be expecting?
I can think of a few possibilities. One is logical necessity: the laws of physics take the form they do because no other form is possible. But that can’t be right; it’s easy to think of other possible forms. The universe could be a gas of hard spheres interacting under the rules of Newtonian mechanics, or it could be a cellular automaton, or it could be a single point. Another possibility is external influence: the universe is not all there is, but instead is the product of some higher (supernatural?) power. That is a conceivable answer, but not a very good one, as there is neither evidence for such a power nor any need to invoke it.
The final possibility, which seems to be the right one, is: that’s just how things are. There is a chain of explanations concerning things that happen in the universe, which ultimately reaches to the fundamental laws of nature and stops. This is a simple hypothesis that fits all the data; until it stops being consistent with what we know about the universe, the burden of proof is on any alternative idea for why the laws take the form they do.
But there is a deep-seated human urge to think otherwise. We want to believe that the universe has a purpose, just as we want to believe that our next lottery ticket will hit. Ever since ancient philosophers contemplated the cosmos, humans have sought teleological explanations for the apparently random activities all around them. There is a strong temptation to approach the universe with a demand that it make sense of itself and of our lives, rather than simply accepting it for what it is.
Part of the job of being a good scientist is to overcome that temptation. “The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational” is a deeply anti-rational statement. The laws exist however they exist, and it’s our job to figure that out, not to insist ahead of time that nature’s innermost workings conform to our predilections, or provide us with succor in the face of an unfeeling cosmos.
Paul Davies argues that “the laws should have an explanation from within the universe,” but admits that “the specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research.” This is reminiscent of Wolfgang Pauli’s postcard to George Gamow, featuring an empty rectangle: “This is to show I can paint like Titian. Only technical details are missing.” The reason why it’s hard to find an explanation for the laws of physics within the universe is that the concept makes no sense. If we were to understand the ultimate laws of nature, that particular ambitious intellectual project would be finished, and we could move on to other things. It might be amusing to contemplate how things would be different with another set of laws, but at the end of the day the laws are what they are.
Human beings have a natural tendency to look for meaning and purpose out there in the universe, but we shouldn’t elevate that tendency to a cosmic principle. Meaning and purpose are created by us, not lurking somewhere within the ultimate architecture of reality. And that’s okay. I’m happy to take the universe just as we find it; it’s the only one we have.
Actually in the short piece you link to I don’t blame anyone, just point out that the claim by Davies that the mood among physicists is shifting in favor of the anthropic principle doesn’t reflect the reality that the great majority of serious physicists don’t want anything to do with it. It’s my impression this is true even within the string theory community.
Hi,
This is completely off topic but I was wondering if you could help me?
I am in an online debate with a Biblical creationist and since he has brought in Quantum Mechanics I thought that I would ask your advice.
He states “Current scientifc assumptions (including those underpinning the evolutionist viewpoint) are increasingly being undermined by quantum science.”
and
“Some insist that genuine understanding demands explanations of the causes of the laws, but it is in the realm of causation that there is the greatest disagreement. Modern quantum mechanics, for example, has given up the quest for causation and today rests only on mathematical description.”(this was taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannic)
That would sort of make the Lemon test in the Dover trial rather redundant, wouldnt it?”
and on
“I then raised the question as to what impact QM could have if causation is no longer an issue for science - it could indirectly open the door to ID as a viable theory as it was the causation that kept it out of the classroom, ref Dover. ”
and
“Now that QM has set the precedent, why can ID not use the same arguments to get into the science class?”
and
“why must ID have causation but according to Encyclopaedia Brit, Quantum Mechanics has “abandoned the search for causation???”
I am a layman in terms of science and I am up on most creationist
fallacies and feel confident enough to discuss biology, paleontology
etc but quantum mechanics is bit beyond me from the little I can get
the length scales in quantum theory and evolution are so far apart
that it makes as much sense as measuring the distance between the
earth and the sun with a 10 inch ruler..but trying to explain that is
another matter.
Any help/advice/hints in answering him would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Harvey
I’m hardly distinguished in distinguished company, but my own layperson’s response to Davies here.
I think most of the critics are having all the same sorts of feelings. Mostly, we’re realizing that maybe Davies has a profoundly different and ambitious idea of what “science” is than the rest of us.
Harvey, the ID question actually has a pretty obvious answer regardless of any particular knowledge of QM. To even GET to the claim that “first cause” ID is a useful explanation of anything, you have to first posit that everything must have causation. So once you’ve done that, ID cannot spin around and declare that the principle doesn’t apply it: that the designer is an exception. If you can have exceptions, then why can’t we all offer our exceptions, like making the universe itself an exception?
But all of that only makes sense within the context of THAT ARGUMENT. If you’re just talking about science, period, then there is no solid rule in the first place to be had that everything must have a cause, or at least that we should always be capable of determining that it had a cause (in QM, most people think the last two statements are basically indistinguishable for all practical purposes, since if you just plain can’t find a cause, there is no way to tell which is true).
He’s confusing the implications of accepting his argument (and then that causing a contradiction) with science in general, which may or may not accept is argument.
As to the rest of his claims, I’m hardly an expert on QM, but I know enough about it to know that the vast majority of claims made about what QM implies for science or reality are BS. The problem with QM is that it’s so weird that it doesn’t lend itself to much of anything that’s analogous to the macro-world.
This subject of the big “why” questions is the reason I love reading Galileo’s scientific work so much. In his early writings and commentary, he expressed utter disdain for those who spent time “philosophizing about nature.” Those aetherial questions of “why is what is the way it is,” were a waste of time in his mind.
An investigator of nature primary purpose was to discover/describe patterns one finds in natural phenomena.
Sean seems to say everything else that can be send in response, so best to end this here.
Paul Davies openly admits at http://aca.mq.edu.au/PaulDavies/prize.htm
I enjoyed at least one of Davies books at school, The Forces of Nature, 2nd ed., 1986. What first warned me that Davies was obsessed with orthodoxy and interested in that suppressing the scientific facts of physics, was the following claim of his on pages 54-7 of his 1995 book About Time:
It turned out that Hafele’s paper didn’t defend SR at all, quite the opposite. Hafele in Science, vol. 177 (1972) pp 166-8, for the analysis of the atomic clocks uses G. Builder (1958), ‘Ether and Relativity’ in the Australian Journal of Physics, v11, p279, which concludes:
Dingle’s claim in the Introduction to his book Science at the Crossroads, Martin Brian & O’Keefe, London, 1972:
was therefore validated by Hafele’s results, since Builder’s analysis is identical to Dingle’s, contrary to the ridicule dished out by Davies.
The underlying message from Davies is that mainstream fashionable consensus, not factual evidence, define what science is.
[BTW, Einstein did get absolute motion wrong in Ann. d. Phys., v17 (1905), p. 891, where he falsely claims: ‘a balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions.’ For the error Einstein made see http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-9/pdf/vol58no9p12_13.pdf Einstein repudiated this in general relativity, e.g., he writes: ‘The special theory of relativity … does not extend to non-uniform motion … The laws of physics must be of such a nature that they apply to systems of reference in any kind of motion. … The general laws of nature are to be expressed by equations which hold good for all systems of co-ordinates, that is, are co-variant with respect to any substitutions whatever (generally co-variant).’ – Albert Einstein, ‘The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity’, Annalen der Physik, v49, 1916 (italics are Einstein’s own).]
I’ve been asking myself why, why would Davies send such a silly, sloppy piece to be published by the NYT. What purpose does it serve? It undermines science, by telling faith-heads like ID proponents that science is just another religion. He may have more subtle points (not very), but that’s the message most people will take away from the piece and he knows it. Then it occurred to me: he did it to sell his book. That’s tapping into a huge market. Perhaps he’ll cash in on the church lecture circuit like the Discovery Institute hacks? Brilliant, nicely done!
Nigel, I don’t see why getting an award from Templeton or being sympathetic to their values and hopes should necessarily be a black flag, though certainly there is some legitimate criticism to be had on the way Templeton pushes its funding and message. Davies has defended it on several occasions, and while I’m not particularly eager for or interested in the goals, the defenses are altogether unreasonable for people that do have religious inclinations and want to know if science can better direct where they’re pointing.
Unfortunately for Davies, this OpEd really weakens his positions and defenses of that sort of program considerably, playing to exactly the sorts of legitimate fears many scientists have about science/religion “mixers.”
Hang on there…”PZ” isnt a very colorful moniker. It’s just short.
If bloggers get colorful monikers, where’s yours?
Anything with a “Z” in it is presumptively colorful. Even if you were born with it.
I’m still working on a good moniker. Something imposing yet playful, like “Galileo Doombabble, Destroyer of Solecisms.” But I was too impatient to let that stop me from blogging.
“PZ” can be a colorful moniker if you’re a synaesthete! (-:
As for the Templeton racket. . . by Janus, that sounds like easy money!
I’ve always seen science as the process of observing, describing, measuring and relating. Any conclusions we draw are suspect, and subject to the results of the continuing refinement of our measurements.
Speculating as to where the “laws” of physics (and nature in general) come from is of dubious value, for our conclusions are built on the results of relating a body of evidence which is constantly being refined. More important, perhaps, our conclusions are influenced by our own culture and point of view.
Some time ago, I read Paul Davies: “The Mind of God”. At the end, Paul asserts that: “We are truly meant to be here”…an anthopic statement as much as an inference about the possible existence of diety.
Since any cosmic models “beyond Einstein” must be inclusive in their ability to describe relativistic phenomena, for example, it might be possilbe, with appropriate fear and trepidation to draw a few general conclusions from what is presently understood about the nature of our existence, consciousness in general and the relationship of informational complexity to the universe as a whole.
To my mind, it all comes back to how the universe is observed. Fish see it one way, Dogs, with their acute sense of smell “see” it another. We as humans have our own unique way of viewing the cosmos. Each of our points of view is as unique as our individual fingerprints.
Science is a unifying “language”…a human way of approaching and solving problems which must be strictly conformed to if it is to remain meaningful and useful. We all have “reasons” for “believing” the way we do; that is to be expected, for our frames of reference are different.
However, in science, our intellectual concepts must be reduced to mathematical models and these models must be verified by increasingly rigorous testing in the field. The concepts and models (our “laws” of nature) are manmade. If they can be verified, they are possibly useful in the construction of a technology- even understanding the nature of our existence- and all scientists are interested. If not, our concepts remain but a personal opinion.
The whole “ultimate cause” line of argument is inherently dishonest. Consider this situation:
Imagine that we have discovered the “theory of everything”: we have found the correct theory for unifying gravity and quantum mechanics. This theory is simple and beautiful, it reduces to a singular equation which can itself be derived from a single physical principle. The person who wants to argue for the existence of God then states, “But what is your explanation for the existence for that physical principle? It must be God!” No, this is nonsense. You don’t get a free pass like that. Yes, there must be an ultimate explanation, at some point you reach an explanation for which there is no explanation. But to claim that any such explanation that is not God is not valid is just plain irrational.
In fact, I contend, attempting to stick a being like God in as a “first cause” is itself fundamentally irrational. First, God, in the way it is typically defined, is a being that is itself unexplainable. So, in essence the argument is that the ultimate explanation is itself a mysterious entity which cannot be properly described. This is, of course, nonsense: if you don’t know what it is that is holding the place of an explanation, then you haven’t explained anything at all.
Then there’s the problem that the explanation is itself monstrously complex. That is, if we consider the way people typically think of a deity, they think of one that is anthropomorphic, at least in the capacity to make decisions, and as such it “explains” the universe because it decided to make the universe as it is. Such a decision-making capacity requires tremendous complexity, making any such being that could fill the place of a decision-making creator God even more complex than that which it explains, reducing the whole edifice to a non-explanation in yet another way.
As for potential ultimate explanations, I really like Max Tegmark’s mathiverse:
http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/toe_frames.html
The idea is pretty simple: perhaps the underlying principle at the heart of it all is nothing more than, “All mathematical structures have physical existence.” Certainly this is a very simple principle, enough such that I sincerely doubt that we can do better. The question remains as to whether or not it’s correct, and if we ever find the mathematical structure that is isomorphic to the region of the universe which we observe (the “theory of everything”), perhaps we will be able to say whether or not this mathiverse makes any sense.
Isn’t the decision to take meaning and purpose as cosmic principles as much a ‘leap of faith’ as the decision to treat them that way? The best religious viewpoints can offer is symbols of this transcendent mystery, but I don’t see how extrapolating from our experience of meaning to the meaningfulness of existence is any more or less justified than extrapolating from our experiences of meaninglessness. Indeed, I wonder if there is any worldview that can fully do justice to both.
I do agree wholeheartedly that meaning is something we give to the universe, and is something that is not intrinsically connected to our explanations about the universe, to the extent that we have any. Well said!
Paul Davies argues that “the laws should have an explanation from within the universe
Seems to me that this is wrong even without assuming a God. (Aren’t there cosmologies where this universe is embedded within another?)
The final possibility, which seems to be the right one, is: that’s just how things are.
This will always be an unsatisfactory explanation, since it is in the nature of science to explain. If someone asks you why the sky is blue, should you say “that’s just how things are?” A more honest answer would be “we don’t know”. It’s best not to pretend to know what you don’t.
I don’t understand this. Except for a probability distribution over the set of all universes there are are no “meta laws”. In the Tegmark ensemble a universe is just a mathematical model. The notion of “physical mechanism” doesn’t apply to the ensemble of universes. Physics is what an observer (a self aware mathematical substructure, according to Tegmak) experiences in his universe.
I wonder if there is any solid proof that the value of physical constants in far away galaxies is the same as here or that they were not changed since the moment of big bang ? I am not sure, but I presume that the answer is negative and there is no proof. If it is so, then our reliance on the known values of fundamental constant when we reason about remote past or remote future is an act of belief or faith.
I bet that a logician used to deal with somewhat classical possible worlds semantics for logics of knowledge and belief would tend to descibe both belief and faith within framework of modal logic KD45. Let us see how the situation looks like from standpoint of modal epistemic logic.
In modal logic of knowledge there is a an axiom “Know( F) is true then F is true” and this axiom does not hold in the logic of beliefs. Both operators Know and Believe have similar semantics:
“Know(F) is true in world M” means that F holds in all worlds accessible from given world M
“Believe(F) is true in world M” means that F holds in all worlds accessible from given world M
The difference between the two cases is that in logic of knowledge the relation “R’ is accessible from R” has to be reflexive (which is the warranty that F is true on M as long as Know(F) is true on M) while in logic of belief this relation does not have to be reflexive. In both logics the accessibility relationship is roughly interpreted as “in all conservable worlds.”
Now, if it is logically possible that fundamental constants can be different in far away galaxies, yet when we reason about far away galaxies in all situations we consider all fundamental constants are the same, then our selection of the set of possible worlds stipulates that we are working in the framework of the logics of belief. Bang! Davies was not wrong in some sense (at least from standpoint of modal logic. See for yourself if this can be useful.)
I think that what makes most fundamental difference between science and religion is that in science we can change our beliefs remaining faithful to our occupation, but if a believer of some religion changes his beliefs, he find that he changed his religion. A set of beliefs defines a religion, but science can not be defined by a fixed set of beliefs. T
First, folks, if Tegmark were right, there’d be no reliable continuity (lawful patterns continuing into the future) because of all the “universes” where attractive forces change into being some other rule than 1/r^2 (or r^(N-1) if N is large space dimensions) and etc. After all, they are describable - I just did. Our chance of being in a description that really simulated lawfulness long-term would be negligible, even if we were in such a model up to this point.
Jason Dick: You are simply wrong that we have to describe something clearly for it to make sense as an explanation. Negative and wide-ranging notions, like “not X” can be coherent logical concepts. As long as what I am saying is somewhere in a class that would fit the bill I am looking for, I don’t need to characterize it any more narrowly. As for God being complex: you don’t understand the idea of the plenum, and of intelligence etc. as potential rather than some particular structure. Ironically, physicists should know better, because of “the vacuum” being able to generate virtual particles of all kinds without having structure. In any case, we really can’t expect any explanation of things to be simplistically accessible in the same way as the things themselves, regardless of whether it’s about “God” or some other scheme, since all of them have to “reach outside” the given and straightforwardly comprehensible in some sense eventually.
Davies: Davies is right that there’s a strong faith component to science: the idea that the universe is susceptible to scientific methods. To a large extent that’s true, and we know it because of what we’ve already accomplished. But there is no reason to expect a priori or for any other reason I know, that everything about it would be. Why should it be? Does it have some obligation to do that? That would be a kind of ironic perspective coming from people who gripe about “anthropocentrism” wouldn’t it? (And don’t ask me to prove that it isn’t, for the claimant is the one with the burden of proof, not to be confused with whoever seems more outside some mainstream or orthodoxy versus the inside.)
But when Davies says, described here as “…a claim to the effect that the laws of nature themselves require an explanation, and that explanation can’t come from the outside.” Assuming that’s a fair characterization (certainly well intentioned, but with Davies non-simplistic way of parsing things, I’m going to double check): this time I don’t agree with him at all. To me, it’s clearly the other way around: the laws of nature have to come from outside. The one thing this universe can’t do is just justify its own laws independently, because of the problem of existential preferability among all possible choices, much discussed among philosophers (but not widely appreciated among scientists, who are - despite their pretensions to being philosophically adept - mostly philosophical near-illiterates.)
I give Sean credit for being suspicious of that opinion of Davies, presumably holding open the door for the idea that the source of the laws being the way they are *does* come from outside the universe. That’s a good expression of open-mindedness here, assuming it’s genuine and won’t be hemmed away later due to fear it helps ideas of God etc. (I don’t see why so many of you feel so *driven* to fight against any notion of existential dependency of the universe. If that would make science harder to do, tough luck: you have no right to assume material facts from matters of convenience.)
One of the commenters well put it thus in a past thread, regarding this stuff having no reason to exist as such without an overarching foundation of being:
Garth Barber on Nov 13th, 2007 at 9:06 am in “Please Tell Me What “God” Means”
… And I am entitled to hold my opinion: “I define God as the author and guarantor of the laws of science - the agent that (constantly) “breathes fire into the equations, making a universe for them to describe.”…
Where the Laws of Physics come from……
The Gline has an interesting link up to a controversy that has arisen from an Op-Ed piece written by pop science writer Paul Davies in the New York Times. The problem is that Davies has said that : “Clearly, then,…
Safe to say we are nowhere near ultimate explanations, so the only real issue is whether the current set of axioms can be further reduced. Is this clog in the drain entirely due to factors beyond our control, or are there institutional strictures that prevent objective review of previous assumptions. I made a few arguments in a previous thread that were very basic in their reasoning, such as that time is a function of motion, like temperature, rather then dimensional basis for it, like space, so it would seem likely anyone here would be able to set me straight, yet the only one with the fortitude to address them was Jason and his defense ultimately boiled down to that if I wasn’t able to describe the problem in mathematical terms, it was meaningless. Which I pointed out was a retreat into formula, not a rebuttal.
So, the question is, are our limits entirely due to the abilities of our knowledge, or does the fog of politics play some part as well?
I may well be lowering the average intelligence of this discussion, but sometimes what we think we know is more dangerous than what we don’t, since so much has been invested in it.
Davies is only technically correct. Faith is an integral property of physics and religion in the same sense that heat is an integral property of ice and molten lead.
Niel B wrote:
That’s the crux of the matter. The naturalistic position is that there is no outside, the supernaturalistic position is that there is.
Note that the “outside” must be supernatural. Otherwise it would (by definition) be intelligible to us and thereby part of the “inside”.
JasonD, I like to put it like this:
Saying that God did it is basically saying
“A hypothetical being that can do anything at all did in a way we don’t understand.”
Claiming that this explains anything at all is indeed nonsense. It can explain anything merely by definition (despite never actually explaining anything) and hence explains nothing. Of COURSE something that can do ANYTHING could have done this thing. But that doesn’t explain how it was, in particular, done, and that answer could work for anything at all.
(Bloggers have much more colorful monikers than respectable folk.)
Have you met Dr. Lionel Tiger?
Just a few words on the laws of nature:
The laws of nature have to be the way they are in order for us to observe them.
Would they be off just a fraction ( like gravitation, electromagnetic) there would be no observer, or at least not us, to question them. Ergo the laws of nature do NOT need an explanation! They are as they are, would they be any different the universe we live in would be very different.
A different Universe on the other hand, would have different laws of nature!
Neil B. said: Davies: Davies is right that there’s a strong faith component to science: the idea that the universe is susceptible to scientific methods. To a large extent that’s true, and we know it because of what we’ve already accomplished.
I think the usual definition of “faith” in these discussion is “belief in the absence of, or even in spite of, supporting evidence.” What does it mean to say that we have “faith” in the evidence? Isn’t that absurd? Hypothesis and experimentation have been proceeding now for centuries, and the evidence is accumulating. Wouldn’t another word be more suitable, such as “confidence” or “trust”? What definition of “faith are you suing that you can make fit to both religion and science? Because if you are using different definitions, that is cheating.
Such universes require more information to describe. One has to assume that universes that can be described with less bits are more likely. Note that an observer is itself a mathematical model that is simulated by a brain which in turn is described by the laws of physics.
You can think of an observer as living in the simulation that the brain is computing. But the effective laws of physics of this virtual world are extremely complicated. In this virtual world the qualia we can experience are fundamental physical objects.
This world exists as a universe in its own right, but because you need an enormous amount of information to describe it, we don’t find ourselves there, rather we see ourselves being simulated in this universe.
Sean C said: “The final possibility, which seems to be the right one, is: that’s just how things are. ”
I guess SC is aware that many philosophers respond in just this way when talking about the low-entropy conditions at the beginning of the universe. I’m sure that SC would dismiss that. But why? That’s just how things were at the beginning of time.
In fact, “that’s just how things are” is not so far from “It’s God’s Will”. Both of them are cop-outs.
the haiku master
is embedded silently
within the haiku
e.
In one sense, Paul Davies leans towards the proponents of ID, meaning the non-secular anthropists. In another sense, though, he leans towards the ID opponents, meaning the secular anthropists.
But because some IDers appear rather pleased with Davies’ message (at least see his message in a positive light), this may serve as evidence that Davies’ anthropic leanings are slightly non-secular in origins.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/taking-science-on-faith/
In the meantime, though, I’ll reserve judgement as to which way Davies leans till I hear what secular anthropists (namely the theorists studying the stringy Landscape) have to say about his message. But as long as the non-secular anthropists see ID as reality while the secular anthropists see ID as an illusion, the secular ones (Raphael Bousso, Joseph Polchinski, and Lenny Susskind, to name a few) won’t be too pleased to hear that Davies’ message pleases some IDers…
Be mindful, though, despite the recent slew of media attacks on strings, I’m still of the strong opinion that the stringy Landscape offers, far and away, the best approach to the cosmological constant problem, not to mention the best approach to the origins of our pocket Universe!
Three dimensions of space are simply the coordinate system of the point these three lines cross and the same space could be described by any number of such coordinate systems/frames. Therefore the motion of any particular coordinate system, relative to the other systems, isn’t an additional dimension, but a process of interaction, where any action is matched by an equal and opposite reaction, so that to the hands of the clock, it is the face going counterclockwise. There is no dimension of time, as one direction is balanced by the other. Motion in space creates a series of events, so that as one is replaced by the next, the previous recedes into the past. The physical reality isn’t moving along this narrative, it is creating it.
If no one is willing to stand up and defend four dimensional spacetime, how much of the rest of what is being discussed is the modern equivalent of arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
why is so much time spent here talking about gods? It may be arrogant to say so but really, the subject borders on the infantile.
okay, that came out sounding like a criticism of Cosmic Variance but my point is actually just the opposite — I love this blog for its science and just don’t see any point discussing gods.
Do you think we’ll STILL be having these arguments in 300 years??
Cynthia: According to Davies’s book (which I reviewed and criticized a while ago) he disagrees with both secular anthropicists (which put the “ultimate turtle” on a random selection from a multiverse) and IDers (which put it on the will of a transcendental deity). His preferred explanation for why the universe is what it is, and friendly for life, is some sort of teleological principle inherent in the laws of nature, instead of transcendent to it. He offers little articulation on how this principle would work, and even less arguments in support of it.
Alejandro: Thanks so much for clearing up some of my misconceptions regarding Davies’ views on the Cosmos! And I must commend you on putting together an excellent review of “Cosmic Jackpot.” Even if Davies isn’t very good at creating his own philosophy, I think I’ll still read this book of his just because he’s good at explaining philosophies of others.
BTW, I stumbled upon this talk of his at Fermilab 10/05 which seems to serve as a rough draft for “Cosmic Jackpot”:
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/051005Davies/index.htm
Math or Magic/miracle ?
Some people (e.g. physicists) prefer Math, because Math gives
predictions (right or wrong, it depends; Magic can produce only
illusions (of hope)).
It is far not right that any math is suitable for our reality.
(1) It seems we need a Field Theory — otherwise there will
be some form of action at a distance, which is a kind of magic
(hard spheres with Newton gravitation, this description was not
appropriate for Newton himself); such a magic can look pretty
well only in computer games, or in sci-fi books and movies.
(2) That fundamental (or low-level) field theory should be
NON-LINEAR — otherwise Achilles would not fill/see his turtle-pet
(moreover, both would not exist) — and hyperbolic (and well-posed,
with D>=4; and, advisably, should provide solutions with digital
information, say, topological charges and quasi-charges,
leading to quantum-like phenomenological (upper-level) models).
(3) Last but not least: solutions of general positions (to this theory) should be eternal (like that \sin(wt) for pendulum, where all time moments are of equal rights); and this requirement is very-very difficult (gradient catastrophe and singularities); today i know only one theory that meets all these demands.
Assume we have a very perfect computer (not even without intellect and some sense of humor, although a bit artificial). That computer is not interested how we call our fields (amplitude of probability, metric field, or something else) — “no metaphysics, please”.
He/she/it only asks:
-”Please give me your equations. Pragmatism, yeah? “.
- Oh, you know, we still should quantize that gravity, so at the moment we do not have a closed and self-consistent theory..
-”Well, if you so convinced that you should do this, nothing can be done about (nichego ne popishesh’)”.
What strikes me as interesting in the discussion of Davies article and indeed “The Cosmic Jackpot”, is that it is firmly based in the Christian narrative (actually one can include all of the Abrahamic religions in this context). I think that it is important to recognize the boundaries and constraints it necessarily imposes upon the dialog. That said, if you were a Taoists you wouldn’t be having this discussion, as a matter of fact, Davies wold not have even written such a piece. But I digress.
I hate to do this but to quote scripture Paul defined faith (in one of many translations) as “the assured expectations of realities not beheld”. Is it then fair to say that a scientific assertion unable to be tested falls within the founder of Christianities very definition of faith?
Bad
Thanks for taking the time out to answer my question.
many thanks
Harvey
When I was in grad school, I heard a talk by Davies. I definitely got the impression from senior people that Davies was somebody that one should laugh at, like Fritjof Capra. But maybe they were just envious that he had made a bundle on his books. This was around or before the first string theory revolution, so string theory had nothing to do with it.
[…] 26, 2007 av Thomas Lennartsson Paul Davies retade för någon dag sedan upp ungefär 95% av alla bloggande naturvetare i en artikel i NY Times. Artikeln kan kokas ned till två ganska koncisa […]
This is completely false, in a number of regards:
1. Mathematical structures don’t change. They are a particular way because of the axioms used to generate them, and cannot change. Therefore any complex substructure that is capable of understanding the universe it is in will necessarily see a universe that has understandable, mathematical laws, and there would be a most fundamental representation of those laws that was completely invariant.
2. Just because you can describe something doesn’t mean that that something is a mathematical structure. In order for it to be so, it must be free from contradiction, not just something that can be imagined.
Oooh, a Tegmark paper brawl! I have *so* been waiting for this. Go!
That’s the simplest possibility, but I’m not sure that other possibilities are entirely ruled out. For example, suppose that a Turing machine, or any other system with computational universality, is taken to be the true underlying mathematical system. (For those who don’t believe a Turing machine can support consciousness, feel free to augment it with whatever extra structure is needed.)
It’s not hard to imagine a Turing machine running a simulation of a world with, simultaneously, conscious beings with consistent memories, but variable and/or inconsistent “laws of physics”. Computer games do the latter all the time: there is usually no underlying set of universal rules, just a patchwork of ad hoc approaches to different phenomena. The conscious participants would then have to be supported by separate algorithms, rather than being supported by what they perceived as the laws governing the world around them.
Now this is obviously a very ugly and inelegant class of mathematical structures, but if all mathematical structures exist, these ones certainly include conscious inhabitants, and would have to be counted.
That said, though Tegmark talks about measures on the space of all mathematical structures, I don’t think he’s ever proposed an actual candidate for such a measure. Personally, I’m of the opinion that the measure is irrelevant! If all structures get to exist, then even if Turing machines with patchwork physics vastly “outnumbered” structures with uniform laws of physics, then I think it’s committing the selection fallacy to say that we learn anything by noticing that we’re not in the majority class. When the hypothesis says the minority class must exist along with the majority, P(at least one observer finds themself in the minority class | hypothesis) = 1, so the probability of the hypothesis is unaltered by the observation. IMO, Tegmark’s hypothesis is aesthetically appealing but completely untestable.
This is what happens when you go all squishy and start accepting statements like “religious people are just as intelligent as atheists, and deserve the same level of respect”.
Dawkins and Hitchens have the right idea.
graviton says
I think this is the question which distinguishes philosophy from science, and I would bet that this is philosophy.
I don’t think the argument will go on for 300 years. In a century from now we’ll have intelligent machines that more powerful than the human brain. Humans will then be replaced by machines. From the perspective of intelligent machines, the Tegmarkian way of looking at things is more natural than it is for us…
Then the invariant laws would be those that determine how the “laws of physics” change with time. Heck, you might even have something as complex as a self-referencing algorithm for the change of the laws, such that the laws can, in effect, modify themselves. But there would still be an invariant algorithm somewhere.
Whenever we deal with whether or not a theory is correct, we must necessarily deal with probabilities. This means, yes, that it is possible we are incorrect. Therefore it only makes sense to rule out a theory when the probabilities are so astronomical that we might as well consider it impossible.
For example, if you found that there were two types of mathematical structure in which intelligent life could potentially evolve (structure A and structure B), and 10^10 more intelligent observers would evolve in A than in B, but we observe that we live inB, then we expect that there’s something wrong with our theory. A theory which instead predicts that there will be as many observers in structure A as in B, or more observers in B, is vastly more likely to be correct.
Do you think we’ll STILL be having these arguments in 300 years??
Of course we will. We were having them in 1707! Why wouldn’t one expect to be having them in 2307 as well?
About faith in science: “Faith”, like lots of conceptual things, isn’t well defined. I prefer as a general definition, something you believe because of some attraction but in the *absence* of positive evidence (N.E.T. presence of negative evidence.) Remember that added traits can be assigned to a subcategory, so what you would still believe even in the face of contrary evidence could be called “blind faith” etc. The faith that *everything* about the universe can be discovered scientifically is “faith” because that degree of scope *is not* evidenced, despite all the things we have gotten such a handle on already (fallacy of presuming a trend *must* continue? Uh, some don’t.) In fact, it looks more like “blind faith” to me, since e.g. we already know that the specific time when a Co-60 nucleus will decay is not discoverable or explainable. Calling it “probability” doesn’t keep that from having those implications. Every method, every tool, has its pros and cons, its capabilities and its limitations. There was no reason to assume that the process used for discovering “laws” would lend itself to answering why they are like that to start with. It is an act of faith, of assuming apples from oranges, to think it will, regardless of how many particular processes have been explained *in terms of* the laws of nature.
I can accept that many of you are suspicious of “metaphysics”, and I have no problem with someone believing or not in whatever is yet undecided or undecidable. But can’t you see the hypocrisy of blithely throwing around “other universes” and variable or other laws of physics if you say you don’t accept what isn’t scientifically accessible? Those things are just not accessible to current or maybe any level of science. Why aren’t you demanding laboratory proof of other universes, “the landscape”, other laws of physics in action, etc? I say – you don’t because of the common vulgar practice of letting “your own” get away with whatever they need to, and only complaining when the other side does it (like in political partisanship, which this argument parallels too much.) Some have accused philosophical theologians (PTers) like me of being “dishonest” – well, I have described real dishonesty. (But it’s OK for someone who admits to doing philosophy to use such ideas, since there’s no self-contradiction. Tough.)
As for whether we should be able to describe “God” etc., no, the best argument is that the universe is not existentially self-sufficient and therefore “something else” is responsible. Such negative arguments are valid avenues of reasoning – we do not, again, have to get any precise handle on what is left if a given postulate (the universe *is* self-sufficient) is rejected. Those who are throwing around clearly uninformed and naïve pretensions of what you think the best arguments in theological philosophy are like, I can only say, you just don’t know how it’s done. Finally, don’t refer to PT as like “ID” – AFAICT, the IDers think of intervention in nature, even I suppose of creatures being made whole like Venus on the half-shell or Adam from dust. PTers consider the issues of existential dependency, why laws are what they are, etc: it has nothing to do with altering what’s here. (Sure, “if God existed maybe He could do that, right?”; and if nature wasn’t orderly, maybe it could act like that anyway too, doh – I am working off the apparent lack of *evidence* that it does, just like you are – only the interpretation of the “Why” is different.) Comparing PT to ID is like comparing liberals to communists. (BTW, many of the militant atheist/anti-metaphysicians remind me so of harsh talk-radio bullies like Rush Limbaugh and even Ann Coulter – it’s the same tough guy/gal, anti-sentimentalist (the other side are soft-hearted sissies and we are cold-hearted and red-blooded real men, etc.) bullying instinct at work. I don’t mean that is evidenced by failure to accept a given theological argument, but it’s out there.
I like Greg Egan’s comment! Of course, there may be a way to locally test Tegmark’s theory, by probing whether or not our universe is logically consistent. Which calls to mind a story called “Luminous” … by Greg Egan.
Davies opens a can of multidimensional worms with inter-relating Theology, Math, and Physics. This he does without axiomatizing his Theophysics and Theomathematics.
Here’s my first cut at classifying, enumerating, and unifying some of the arguments made in this thread.
Let G = “God exists.”
Let M = “Math works (is consistent, etc.).”
Let P = “The physical universe exists.”
Not sure how to draw the symbol on HTML, so let’s use the word
“proves” instead the symbol from Proof Theory.
We have 6 metaphysical stances related to these 6 statements, for each
of which I make a brief comment:
P proves M (and Applied Math is more “real” than nonphysical abstract Math).
P proves G (Deist and Creationist argument that the beauty and harmony
of the cosmos prove the glory of the creator).
G proves P (Spinoza’s theory that the universe exists “in the mind of God”).
G proves M (God is the ultimate mathematician, Blak’s etching of God
as Geometer).
M proves G (specious Mathematical “proofs” of the existence of God).
M proves P (Tegmark’s theory that we live inside a mathematical object).
Pairs of these can give isomorphisms related to Medieval and Galileo’s
claim that the Book of Nature and the Bible are two different views of
the same thing.
We can also provide 6 Unifications of Theomathematics and Theophysics:
P proves M proves G
P proves G proves M
G proves P proves M
G proves M proves P
M proves G proves P
M proves P proves G
which can, if a loop is valid (such as M proves P proves G proves M),
collapse God, Math, and Physics to equivalence.
Many open questions remain. For eample: does “The Unreasonable
Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” by Eugene Wigner
suggest that M proves P or P proves M?
I don’t think there is any new content here; just an original
notational way to classify a large body of writings from disparate
authors.
Of course, some of the arguments that I classify have intrinsic
historical importance, or literary merit.
For example:
“The famous beginning of Psalm 19 announces that the heavens declare
the glory of God and the sky declares his handiwork.”
When I classify that as “P proves G” something has clearly been lost
in translation.
Books
Desert Storm Understanding the capricious God of the Psalms.
by James Wood October 1, 2007
The New Yorker
“What is God like? Is he merciful, just, loving, vengeful, jealous? Is
he a bodiless force, a cool watchmaker, or a hot interventionist, a
doer with big opinions, a busy chap up in Heaven? Does he, for
instance, approve of charity and disapprove of adultery? Or are these
attributes instead like glass baubles that we throw against the statue
of his invisibility, inevitably shattering into mere words? The
medieval Jewish thinker Maimonides thought that it was futile to
belittle God by giving him human attributes; to do so was to commit
what later philosophers would call a category mistake. We cannot
describe his essence; better to worship in reverent silence. ‘Silence
is praise to thee,’ Maimonides wrote, quoting from the second verse of
Psalm 65….” [truncated]
Needless to say, many of the “complaints, fears, hopes…prayers,
songs, incantations…soliloquies” are mutually inconsistent, and much
writing on these subjects is internally contradictory.
And so, I think, is the Davies argument. Of course, he’s made over a megabuck from such arguments, so avoiding contradiction may not be his goal.
Sure. But my point is that it’s conceivable that the underlying regularity would be completely inaccessible to us, and once you allow Turing machines in the Tegmark hypothesis, you’ve predicted essentially every set of (computable) observations, however chaotic and irregular.
This is intuitively appealing, but I think it’s wrong. You stress probability, but Tegmark’s hypothesis leads to all its outcomes with certainty. If Tegmark’s hypothesis predicts our universe with certainty (and I think it does), and also another universe in which life is far more common by a factor of 10^10 (which I expect it also does, since you get to fiddle not only with the Drake equation but also fundamental constants), then why does our failure to live in the second universe falsify, or even lower the likelihood of, Tegmark’s hypothesis? When we make an observation, it is not preceded by a process in which we are selected at random from the pool of all conscious beings. When there are multiple universes containing conscious life, there are a multitude of observations — and the observations we make don’t need to be picked from some giant cosmic barrel in order for us to make them. Under such hypotheses, we are not testing (and can not test) what a “typical” observer will see.
I think the false intuition here arises by comparison with probabilistic theories that deal with a finite number of trials. If theory A tells us that we have a fair coin, while theory B tells us that it’s biased for heads, then if we toss the coin 10 times and see 10 heads, we are entitled to favour theory B. But what’s different here is that only 1 in 2^10 of the possible outcomes is generated. Tegmark’s hypothesis generates all outcomes, not a random sample. The conditional probabilities are all equal to 1 , so Bayes’s theorem gives us nothing with which to refine our prior probabilities. (Well, there might be some conditional probabilities of 0, if you can think of something that literally can’t happen within any mathematical structure.)
There’s a similar flawed intuition behind the Boltzmann Brain argument, which claims that we should favour cosmological parameters that rule out the future evolution of Boltzmann Brains, on the basis that if they eventually come into existence and outnumber us, that would render us vastly atypical. To which I think the correct response is “so what?” If theories with parameter set A and parameter set B both give comparable probabilities for planet-bound life like us to exist at all, then it’s irrelevant whether or not set A also predicts a far future full of 10^10 more conscious vacuum fluctuations than there ever were instances of conscious planetary life.
Sean mentioned a paper a while back, Are We Typical? by Hartle and Srednicki that deals with some of these issues, though since it doesn’t address Tegmark it doesn’t confront head-on what it means when a hypothesis predicts essentially all possible observations.
There’s an old African saying that if you want to travel fast, go alone, but if you want to travel far, go with a group.
The problem, especially in the chaos of the modern world, is defining and motivating the group. That’s where arbitrary beliefs are useful. They separate the true believers from everyone else.
Science does this subconsciously as well. That is what four dimensional spacetime is. The frame and the direction, with no conflict or paradox. Remember Christianity didn’t become the state religion of Rome because Jesus was such a nice guy, but because Constantine had a vision of the cross as a war totem. What better to get everyone focused and moving in the same direction, but the crosshairs of a two dimensional coordinate?
Look at cosmology. It has coalesced around a theory of the universe as a single entity, going from start to finish and anytime the data is contradictory, some new energy, or force or additional theory is assumed, the theory is never questioned. Is that the epitome of true belief, or what?
The problem is that it is just another house of cards or bubble. Usually these grow until they just can’t anymore, then it all falls flat as a pancake and everyone wonders how they ever thought pets.com, or that house, or that theory could have ever been that important, or that expensive. Someday, in the not to distant future, there will be a lot of Christians wondering why they didn’t get raptured before everything fell apart, but today’s cosmologists won’t have that epiphany. The economy supporting their endeavors to find the edge of the universe will collapse before it gives them that next bigger telescope they need and they will go to their graves believing, hoping someday the proper instruments are built.
The parameters and constraints of a given model determine the reasonable possibilities for conscious existence in the cosmology.
An eternal universe of infinite mass in tandem with flat space can eventually, by conjecture of a certain kind, produce anything and everything…everything is possible.
An eternal universe of finite mass with closed space and invariant frames of reference still has great potential to produce complexity, and posesses built in engineering constraints which make the development of complexity plausable.
Any cosmology which is finite in time, finite in mass and limited in spatial extent is highly unlikely to contain high levels of informational complexity.
Note in paragraph 2…”conjecture of a certain kind”. I imply that such a cosmology is fatally flawed. Complexity requires well defined cosmological contraints to be formed, conserved and evolve, as organic evolution on Earth is only possible for fish while bodies of water exist, or higher animals so long as the atmosphere contains Oxygen…or the the fact that the inital origin of life required certain substances (amino acids etc) in pools of water and probably lightning.
The idea that overall universal entropy can decline and informational complexity increase in an open soup of quantum fluctuations is highly suspect…infinite or not, perhaps ESPECIALLY if it is infinite!
It is interesting that when we have so little understanding of the development of information and complexity in our own universe, we try to escape our dilemma by imagining infinite additonal sets of universes, the existence of which is only suggested by assuming our present hypotheses are correct.
Any scientist needs to develop a profound respect for the universal existence of inorganic information and organic high complexity in the universe. We also need to remind ourselves, as we construct models, of the necessary quantum connection between observation and existence.
I am not a scientist, but I’m not sure I recall anywhere where it said that scientists have faith that the universe behaves according to “rational” physical laws. Quantum mechanics seemingly defies rationality, as does aspects of General Relativity (black holes). Of course, our understanding of rationality is biased by our own evolution. We’ve identified a few rules which the universe obeys. But because the universe obeys them does not make them rational, it just means it obeys them. We don’t need faith to believe this because we have evidence.
Five hundred years ago, the reigning rationality was that the Sun revolved around the Earth. It is only rational in retrospect that the Earth revolves around the Sun. In this case, religion had to bend to science, but the science did not change. Religion will have to continue to redraw the bounds of faith to explain the new truths of science.
Why does our universe obey these rules? The potential explanations are innumerable, at least as many as there habitable planets in the universe, but the observation, the rule, remains valid in each case. It doesn’t matter if the rule is rational, it only matters that you can observe it.
Davies’ blather exemplifies the fact that a sentence that has the syntactic form of an interrogative is not necessarily a sensible question.
[…] Sean Carroll’s Turtles Much of the Way Down […]
Santa does not exist
but you can visit Santa’s Grotto
at the click of a ‘mouse’ - and almost at the speed of light
birds do it, bees do it, even turtles do it…
Sean, it seemed to me your post treated the questions “Could the fundamental laws of physics possibly be otherwise?” and “Does the universe have meaning and/or purpose?” as equivalent. I wonder if this equivalency is of necessity, i.e., even if we learn that the laws of physics could not be otherwise, does this necessarily bear at all on whether the universe has meaning or purpose?
My instinct would be to answer in the negative, but I must admit I haven’t thought much about it.
The universe does not behave according to our pre-conceived ideas. It continues to surprise us.
One might not think it mattered very much, if determinism broke down near black holes. We are almost certainly at least a few light years, from a black hole of any size. But, the Uncertainty Principle implies that every region of space should be full of tiny virtual black holes, which appear and disappear again. One would think that particles and information could fall into these black holes, and be lost. Because these virtual black holes are so small, a hundred billion billion times smaller than the nucleus of an atom, the rate at which information would be lost would be very low. That is why the laws of science appear deterministic, to a very good approximation. But in extreme conditions, like in the early universe, or in high energy particle collisions, there could be significant loss of information. This would lead to unpredictability, in the evolution of the universe.
To sum up, what I have been talking about, is whether the universe evolves in an arbitrary way, or whether it is deterministic. The classical view, put forward by Laplace, was that the future motion of particles was completely determined, if one knew their positions and speeds at one time. This view had to be modified, when Heisenberg put forward his Uncertainty Principle, which said that one could not know both the position, and the speed, accurately. However, it was still possible to predict one combination of position and speed. But even this limited predictability disappeared, when the effects of black holes were taken into account. The loss of particles and information down black holes meant that the particles that came out were random. One could calculate probabilities, but one could not make any definite predictions. Thus, the future of the universe is not completely determined by the laws of science, and its present state, as Laplace thought. God still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
That is all I have to say for the moment. Thank you for listening.
Does God Play Dice? by Professor Stephen Hawking
I would usually consider such question as something beyond science. So, for a typical scientist, it’s not their jobs to ask such an overwhelming question. What I think is that if we keep on asking ourselves such question that bores deeper and deeper and becoming more and more fundamental, we end up falling in a bottomless pit. It’s just like that: once we find a set of general rules, we question them and form new sets of rules to explain those. Then we go further and question these rules and form another new set of more fundamental rules to explain these. It’s like proving in mathematics, you need theorems to prove theorems, and axioms to prove the more fundamental theorems. At the end of the day, you start questioning those axioms and find that you are digging into an infinite cycle of proving. This is how we are studying the universe. But we have to know where to stop or end up falling in a bottomless pit of reasonings.
Exactly as I said in an earlier thread “Everybody’s got to be somewhere”.
Greg, it is still the case that the same observer (observer = mathematical model = universe in its own right) can be found embedded in different larger universes. When we do physics we try to infer something about this larger universe.
We can ask about the the probability distribution of some variable we are about to observe, given all the knowledge stored in our brains so far. This should be well defined in principle…
Not true, see here
Why does anyone even refer to our universe as being *representable* by a mathematical structure, much less “being” one? I mean really, look at the wave function and it’s collapse: you can’t even model it properly because of simultaneity problems, maybe the issues of Renninger negative result measurements, unreliable detectors, etc. And don’t tell me, it’s OK because it’s just a representation, etc: No, if you really “believe in electrons” then “something” comes out of a nucleus or electron gun, and then appears at some spot and not anywhere else - and yet multiple shots show an interference pattern. It is absurd as a realist/mathematical concept. (BTW, multiple worlds and decoherence are BS anyway, since they still don’t get us to the actual localization itself from waves, they just hypocritically work off the collapse already being taken for granted and then just work it into their treatment of wave interaction and evolution.)
Also: I wasn’t implying that everyone who is against the idea of God etc. is a hack, anymore than I think that everyone who is a “conservative” is a hack - but the parallel is right there: like the difference between sincere strict constructionists and cynical neocons. It’s much like the difference between sincere atheists or doubters (many of you here), with what appear to them to be perfectly good arguments (and some aren’t bad), versus manipulators (yes, often unconsciously of course) of notions of multiple worlds etc. to discredit God concepts, while pretending to uphold the old rational/postivist tradition that would have rejected both as unknowable or “meaningless.” I think Stenger is one of the worst at that - he wants to admit other worlds, while conveniently corraling possible alternatives into all being kind of like ours, instead of appreciating that unleashing “existability” opens a huge can of worms - maybe even God Herself.
how surprising is it that people who argue about god and science without having a real understanding of what either one is get confused?
[…] of taking issue with Davies’ op-ed, he deconstructs Sean Carroll’s argument against it over at Cosmic Variance. Carroll’s argument […]
Egan, your arguments concerning the misuse of probabilistic arguments are the most cogent I have ever encountered. You have greatly helped me clarify my thinking on this important issue and I thank you for that. The Boltzmann argument, and its many parallels and restatements in other areas of modern debate, have always struck me as profoundly missing the point, and I appreciate your ability to articulate why this is true so clearly.
Count Iblis (#62), if you want to define all observers with the same subjective history to be “one observer”, that’s fine by me — it’s really a semantic issue, but this is a supportable choice of definition.
But when this “one observer” with N different “threads” in N different universes makes a fresh observation, under Tegmark’s hypothesis you end up with exactly the same result as ever: there are now m different observers for the m results of the experiment, consisting of N_1, N_2, N_3, … N_m “threads” respectively, and the values of N_i are irrelevant, because even if N_1 << N_2 << … N_m, so long as N_1 is non-zero it is still a certainty — not an outcome with probability N_1/N — that result 1 of the experiment will be observed by someone. When I do this experiment and find result 1, I still have nothing to go on except:
P(there will be someone with the history I had prior to the experiment who sees result 1 | Tegmark’s hypothesis) = 1
I never had empirical access to N before, and I have no empirical access to N_1 now, or to any of the N_i, or to m, the number of ways I’ve been split. If I am trying to figure out whether the universe is governed by Tegmark’s hypothesis, or by some other model that predicts at least one observer seeing result 1 for the experiment I just did, then I have no basis for rejecting Tegmark’s hypothesis.
I am not entitled to say “Gosh, under Tegmark’s hypothesis what are the odds that *my* consciousness ended up in this minority branch of my subjective future?”; that’s as misguided as saying “What are the odds that *I* get to be this particular one of the six billion humans on Earth that I actually am?”
As Chemicalscum put it, “Everybody’s got to be somewhere”. Unless they’re nowhere. The only way you can try to falsify Tegmark is by constructing a potential observation (or set of observations, as large as you like) that Tegmark would predict literally no observer seeing. Given that we expect any real model of physics to be a sub-case of Tegmark’s grand catalogue, I’d be amazed if such a test can be devised, and even more amazed if the result falsified Tegmark’s hypothesis!
Greg, it’s not that hard to cast doubt on Tegmark’s hypothesis of (apparently) radical modal realism (or at least, of “mathematical structures.”) As I’ve said before, the number (roughly) of describable universes (”possible worlds”, PWs) is much larger than the number of nice clean ones with simple and continued laws of physics. In other words, there are many more PWs with sloppy laws of attraction like 1/r^2.1223 and not even consistent between particles or in time (since we can describe that - I just did!), or filled with “electrons” of slightly or greatly varying masses, etc. Well, even if we have to “find ourselves” in a PW conducive to life, the chances are that even then, many features would still be sloppy, and not elegant “laws of physics.” Even worse, once we got to this point, there are many more PWs where things wouldn’t continue as they had before (just like many more toss-regimens of coins where, having gotten to 50 heads in a row out of 100 tosses total, there are more where the remaining tosses vary in all kinds of ways than the one which continues to come up heads, etc.) And don’t tell me, as some did hereabouts, those aren’t really “mathematical structures” since I guess they aren’t continuous functions I guess: matrices are real math, and unrelated numbers, and there’s Fourier analysis which can handle one function spliced onto another or chunks of unrelated hills and valleys, etc.
Our being in a “nice elegant universe” is absurdly unlikely from the point of view of wild pan-realism for PWs, so I say there’s “Management” of some sort, regardless of just what sort of thing that is.
PS: since it’s easier here: I still have trouble with that extra acceleration of a lateral moving particle in the planar mass field being consistent with the equivalence principle. After all, the components of acceleration can be compared separately, so the total being adjusted to conserve energy wouldn’t keep the accelerations of relatively moving bodies from being “different.” Also, what if it’s a stationary (relative to the plane) but rotating ring - how fast does that fall? At the rate appropriate to the rim velocity? Doesn’t that have problems? tx
Neil, you haven’t engaged at all with my argument on Tegmark. I agree with you that his hypothesis predicts many “non-elegant” universes. Unfortunately the numbers are invisible to us, and hence irrelevant. Tegmark’s hypothesis is untestable metaphysics; it is not refuted by the elegance of the universe, but given that it’s irrefutable in principle I am obviously not arguing that it should be treated as science. Equally, your claim about “Management” is untestable metaphysics. Go ahead and believe whatever you feel like believing, but the bottom line is you have no logical basis with which to persuade anyone else to share those beliefs.
On the equivalence principle and different accelerations, consider this analogy. Pick a point P on a sphere, and consider all the geodesics — all the great circles — that pass through P. You should find it trivially easy to prove that the rate at which they “accelerate away from” each other, evaluated at P, is zero.
To make this more precise: take two geodesics through P, and travel a distance s away from P along both of them, reaching points Q and R. Compute the length of the geodesic QR (this isn’t actually unique, but there’s a unique sensible choice when close to P). The second derivative of the length of QR with respect to s, evaluated at s=0, is zero.
This is not something special about the sphere, it is a property of all geodesics on smooth manifolds, including the world lines of free-falling particles in GR. When two particles in free fall pass each other, if you then ask how far apart they are after a proper time of tau has passed for both of them, the second derivative of that distance wrt tau, evaluated at tau=0, will be zero. That is what the equivalence principle demands, and that’s what basic differential geometry guarantees.
How, then, can someone using a certain coordinate system measure different accelerations for the coordinate