Fine-Tuning Problem in Cosmology

[Dancing David]

Yes. If the values of the constants are random, universes with complex structures (galaxies, stars, varieties of atoms, molecules, planets) would be very rare.

IF the vaules are random.

Which there is no reason to assume that they are so.

 

[Dancing David]

The fine tuning is extremely interesting and interdependent, but beyond that, I and many others question the presumption of a big bang.

And on what basis do you do so, we can take this to a new thread if you want.

The BBT (big ban theory) is based upon the observed observation of the expansion of the universe.

The BBE Big bang event) is however not part of the current BBT which stops at 10^-36 seconds after the BBE

The BBE itself is beyond observation at this point.

But I am quite willing to engage in discourse upon this if you wish.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Yes. If the values of the constants are random, universes with complex structures (galaxies, stars, varieties of atoms, molecules, planets) would be very rare.

They are very rare. To the best of our knowledge, there exists only one.

Hans

 

[Toontown]

IF the vaules are random.

Which there is no reason to assume that they are so.

A number of respected scientists see plenty of reasons to assume they are random, beginning with decades of scientific research which has failed to reveal a single clue that there might be some undiscovered mechanism which forces the values to their observed magnitudes.

Analogy: If, in an effort to determine whether there is gold buried in your back yard, you spend decades intermittently digging for it and find nothing, will you continue to maintain that there is no reason to assume there is no gold there? If so, how will you answer when someone points to the strip mine that was once your yard and asks why that isn't reason to assume there is no gold there?

 

[Toontown]

They are very rare. To the best of our knowledge, there exists only one.

Hans

Your statement is false. You have no such knowledge as is suggested by the highlighted word. The inclusion of the highlighted word constitutes either a fundamental error of reasoning or a semantic error.

Analogy: You live on an isolated island. One day you spot the only land animal you've ever seen or heard of. At that point, you would be correct to say you are now aware of the existence of one such animal. It would be false to claim you know only one such animal exists. You could correctly say you have seen only one such animal. But that's as far as it goes.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Analogy: You live on an isolated island. One day you spot the only land animal you've ever seen or heard of. At that point, you would be correct to say you are now aware of the existence of one such animal. It would be false to claim you know only one such animal exists. You could correctly say you have seen only one such animal. But that's as far as it goes.

That analogy falls apart a bit since we know that animals require a breeding population to survive, and yet we don't know that this is true of universes.

 

[Dancing David]

A number of respected scientists see plenty of reasons to assume they are random, beginning with decades of scientific research which has failed to reveal a single clue that there might be some undiscovered mechanism which forces the values to their observed magnitudes.

Analogy: If, in an effort to determine whether there is gold buried in your back yard, you spend decades intermittently digging for it and find nothing, will you continue to maintain that there is no reason to assume there is no gold there? If so, how will you answer when someone points to the strip mine that was once your yard and asks why that isn't reason to assume there is no gold there?

So you won't admit it is all speculation?
Okay

 

[Dancing David]

Your statement is false. You have no such knowledge as is suggested by the highlighted word. The inclusion of the highlighted word constitutes either a fundamental error of reasoning or a semantic error.

Analogy: You live on an isolated island. One day you spot the only land animal you've ever seen or heard of. At that point, you would be correct to say you are now aware of the existence of one such animal. It would be false to claim you know only one such animal exists. You could correctly say you have seen only one such animal. But that's as far as it goes.

What other universe do you know of?

How can you compare our universe to an island, we can't get out of our universe and we don't have that knowledge at this time.

 

[Toontown]

That analogy falls apart a bit since we know that animals require a breeding population to survive, and yet we don't know that this is true of universes.

Perfect analogies are few and far between, but whatever. Substitute something else for "animal". Make it a "doohickey", which no one has ever seen and no one knows anything about.

But analogy-nitpicking aside, the underlying point is: the observation of one thing of a kind, absent known constraints, suggests the possibility of the existence of other things of like kind.

And whether you accept the analogy or the underlying point or not, the fact remains that MRC_Hans has made a false claim.

 

[Dr. Keith]

But analogy-nitpicking aside, the underlying point is: the observation of one thing of a kind, absent known constraints, suggests the possibility of the existence of other things of like kind.

No it doesn't, not unless you know they are required, like animals.

And whether you accept the analogy or the underlying point or not, the fact remains that MRC_Hans has made a false claim.

His claim is that to the best of our knowledge there is only one. Unless you have knowledge of another I think that claim is solid. I have no knowledge of another, MRC_Hans has no knowledge of another, so I think to the best of our knowledge there is only one. That our knowledge may be lacking is always a legitimate question, but at this point we only know of one universe.

 

[Toontown]

So you won't admit it is all speculation?
Okay

I affirmatively answered your question about the speculative nature of the issue several posts back, and even went to the bother of pointing out that scientific hypotheses are speculative by nature. Yet you keep asking as if you think I'm admitting I've committed a crime or something.

Do you think there is something wrong with informed speculation? You couldn't get through a day without it. You couldn't even convince yourself to cross a busy street without the aid of informed speculation as to your chances of getting across without getting ironed out by a motorized loon - which has nearly happened to me several times in the past week.

For how long should a fruitless search for the undiscovered mechanism which forces the values of the assumed "constants" to their observed magnitudes be continued before it would become unlikely that any such assumed mechanism exists?

 

[Toontown]

No it doesn't, not unless you know they are required, like animals.



His claim is that to the best of our knowledge there is only one. Unless you have knowledge of another I think that claim is solid. I have no knowledge of another, MRC_Hans has no knowledge of another, so I think to the best of our knowledge there is only one. That our knowledge may be lacking is always a legitimate question, but at this point we only know of one universe.

Long story short, you have no knowlege that only one exists, but you still want to claim such knowledge through semantic juggling.

I've explained why your reasoning is invalid. You cannot conclude that only one of a thing exists from a single observation of the thing. You can speculate so, but that would be to commit the apparently verboten speculation.

 

[Toontown]

No it doesn't, not unless you know they are required, like animals.

Do you honestly believe that no possibility of another thing of an observed kind exists unless you know it is required?

Has it not occurred to you that the observed existence of one thing of a kind demonstrates that fundamental nature caused the existence of the observed thing?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I affirmatively answered your question about the speculative nature of the issue several posts back, and even went to the bother of pointing out that scientific hypotheses are speculative by nature. Yet you keep asking as if you think I'm admitting I've committed a crime or something.

Do you think there is something wrong with informed speculation? You couldn't get through a day without it. You couldn't even convince yourself to cross a busy street without the aid of informed speculation as to your chances of getting across without getting ironed out by a motorized loon - which has nearly happened to me several times in the past week.

This is utter nonsense. You are conflating a hypothesis with no evidence to support it, with hypotheses with an enormous wealth of evidence to support them. This is precisely the "evolution is just a theory" argument turned on its head. Not all "speculative hypotheses" are equal.

Long story short, you have no knowlege that only one exists, but you still want to claim such knowledge through semantic juggling.

I've explained why your reasoning is invalid. You cannot conclude that only one of a thing exists from a single observation. You can speculate so, but that would be to commit the apparently verboten speculation.

This logic works for things like apples. I see one apple, it's a pretty good bet there are more apples around somewhere. However I'm not sure there's a meaningful equivalence between apples and the set of everything that exists.

Does this supposed logic ever end? I see a universe, I conclude that there must be a multiverse. I deduce a multiverse, so I conclude that there must be a megamultiverse. I deduce a megamultiverse so I conclude that there must be infinity cubed cubed superdupermegamultiverses, so there must be super-infinity to the power of infinity plus two dumptruckloads of ultrasuperdupermegamultiverses... You see the problem?

 

[Dr. Keith]

Long story short, you have no knowlege that only one exists, but you still want to claim such knowledge through semantic juggling.

I've explained why your reasoning is invalid. You cannot conclude that only one of a thing exists from a single observation of the thing. You can speculate so, but that would be to commit the apparently verboten speculation.

It is not a single observation. It is all observation ever, from every observer we know of, and from every observation made to this point.

Uniqueness is not common, but in this case we have looked high and low, far and wide, under every rock and behind every bush and yet, to the best of our collective knowledge, the sum of all of these observations, there is only one universe.

I expect that knowledge could change, but it hasn't yet. And pointing out that unique things are rare isn't enough.

 

[Dr. Keith]

You see the problem?

I see turtles. Again.

 

[Toontown]

This is utter nonsense. You are conflating a hypothesis with no evidence to support it, with hypotheses with an enormous wealth of evidence to support them. This is precisely the "evolution is just a theory" argument turned on its head. Not all "speculative hypotheses" are equal.

At this point, both you and Dancing David, in your apparent zeal to remain slick and heavy, have succeeded only in demonstrating that you do not know the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a scientific theory.

Here's your clue: Hypotheses do not have "an enormous wealth of evidence" to support them. A hypothesis is an informed assumption. When and if the enormous wealth of evidence comes, the hypothesis becomes a theory.

This logic works for things like apples. I see one apple, it's a pretty good bet there are more apples around somewhere. However I'm not sure there's a meaningful equivalence between apples and the set of everything that exists.

You have no reason to think that what we can see with our telescopes is in fact everything that exists. That mistake has been repeated too many times for smart cosmologists to repeat it again.

Does this supposed logic ever end? I see a universe, I conclude that there must be a multiverse. I deduce a multiverse, so I conclude that there must be a megamultiverse. I deduce a megamultiverse so I conclude that there must be infinity cubed cubed superdupermegamultiverses, so there must be super-infinity to the power of infinity plus two dumptruckloads of ultrasuperdupermegamultiverses... You see the problem?

Your "supposed logic" ends as soon as you stop mischaracterizing what I actually said. When you stop doing that, your "supposed logic" collapses like a house of cards in the wind.

Just for starters, the inflationsary multiverse was not "deduced" from the existence of the visible universe.

 

[Toontown]

It is not a single observation. It is all observation ever, from every observer we know of, and from every observation made to this point.

So you're coming off the observation of one universe and switching to every observation of everything we've ever seen inside the universe. Out of one dead end alley, right up the next.

You should know that the inflation hypothesis has explained and predicted cosmological observations better than the standard model or any other hypothesis.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

At this point, both you and Dancing David, in your apparent zeal to remain slick and heavy, have succeeded only in demonstrating that you do not know the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a scientific theory.

Here's your clue: Hypotheses do not have "an enormous wealth of evidence" to support them. A hypothesis is an informed assumption. When and if the enormous wealth of evidence comes, the hypothesis becomes a theory.

That's a nice attempt at a distraction, but I don't plan to let you slide away from the point that easily.

Let's cut your Gordian knot of terminological quibbling and just call all predictions about how the universe works Thingies. You are trying to draw an equivalence between Thingies with an overwhelming weight of evidence supporting them and Thingies with no evidence supporting them. This is not intellectually legitimate.

You have no reason to think that what we can see with our telescopes is in fact everything that exists. That mistake has been repeated too many times for smart cosmologists to repeat it again.

Once again you seem to be dodging the issue. To be clear, we're defining the universe as everything that exists in the known set of dimensions, not just everything within our light cone or everything within telescope range of Earth as of 2014.

We see evidence of one universe all around us. We do not see evidence of multiple universes.

Your "supposed logic" ends as soon as you stop mischaracterizing what I actually said. When you stop doing that, your "supposed logic" collapses like a house of cards in the wind.

Just for starters, the inflationsary multiverse was not "deduced" from the existence of the visible universe.

Are you changing your argument now? Your argument was very clearly that because we can see one universe, we should therefore conclude multiple universes. That is a very silly argument which leads to an infinite regress of higher-order infinities and it would indeed be a good idea to abandon it.

 

[Fudbucker]

That's a nice attempt at a distraction, but I don't plan to let you slide away from the point that easily.

Let's cut your Gordian knot of terminological quibbling and just call all predictions about how the universe works Thingies. You are trying to draw an equivalence between Thingies with an overwhelming weight of evidence supporting them and Thingies with no evidence supporting them. This is not intellectually legitimate.



Once again you seem to be dodging the issue. To be clear, we're defining the universe as everything that exists in the known set of dimensions, not just everything within our light cone or everything within telescope range of Earth as of 2014.

We see evidence of one universe all around us. We do not see evidence of multiple universes.



Are you changing your argument now? Your argument was very clearly that because we can see one universe, we should therefore conclude multiple universes. That is a very silly argument which leads to an infinite regress of higher-order infinities and it would indeed be a good idea to abandon it.

No it wasn't, it doesn't lead to an infinite regress, and this is starting to get embarrassing.

What is more likely, Kevin? That you, Kevin Lowe, know more about cosmology than Stephen Hawking, Andrei Linde, Max Tegmark, Paul Davies (and a bunch of other renowned scientists)... or that you're wrong?

What is the proper skeptical response when the topic is obscure and you're confronted by numerous experts who contradict you?