Fine Tuning, Arguments For and Against

[mistermack]

What are the main arguments for and against "Fine tuning" of the universe?
I thought it might be good to concentrate them in one thread, so I'm inviting members to post what they think are the strongest arguments for and against. ( or links to online arguments ).
I apologise if it's already been done.

Here are my own offerings : You'll see I'm biased against the fine tuning argument. ( at the moment ) but I'm happy to be converted if the evidence is there. I would like to know about the science of the argument FOR fine tuning.

1) Us calling the Universe 'fine tuned' is like a lottery winner believing that he was 'meant' to win. He can't believe that his ticket was exactly right, against the odds of millions to one. And completely ignores the fact that he is just one of millions, and someone has to win.
It's the same with the Universe, it could have possibly been in millions of different forms, but it had to be one, and it was this one.

2) Us claiming the Universe is fine-tuned for our benefit, is like a single grain of sand in the Sahara being home to a unique species of intelligent bacteria, and they conclude that the entire Sahara was created so that they could occupy that one grain of sand.

3) Here is MY version of a fine tuned universe created for the benefit of man :
Just one thousand 'Earths', travelling around one single Sun, in equally spaced orbit. No need for the milky way, or the rest of the universe. So when we fill up the Earth, ( I think we already have ) we can start on Earth-2.
No nasty viruses or lethal bacteria, just the friendly ones. No weeds.

Some of the other 'Earths' could be lower gravity, so we could retire there when we get old, and bounce around like young things.
Nuclear fusion would be MUCH easier to manage, so electricity would be free.

This list can go on and on.
All offerings welcome.
.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

As a keen botanist, I take exception to your "no weeds" criterium! Wild plants are far more interesting than the forced hybrids that fill our gardens.

[mistermack]

As a keen botanist, I take exception to your "no weeds" criterium! Wild plants are far more interesting than the forced hybrids that fill our gardens.

Yes, your right I suppose. No weeds, no butterflies as well. And no pesky insects, no swallows and swifts.
Maybe we would need to 'fine tune' what we discard more carefully.
The 'against' argument is not doing too well at the moment.
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[Gawdzilla Sama]

mistermack, if we were in a finely tuned universe there would be no need for 1,000 Earths, one would be enough, and we'd never fill it. See Ringworld.

[Farsight]

I agree with your sentiment, mistermack. The constants aren't constant anyway. The fine-structure constant,which gives the relative strength of the electromagnetic force as compared to the strong force, is a running constant. That means it isn't a constant. The speed of light isn't constant, it varies with what we call gravitational potential, as we can see when we compare two light clocks. But the immersive scale-change means we can't see the difference locally, so we apply the label gravitational time dilation instead.

There's a lot more like this. Hence IMHO the fine-tuned universe and the associated anthropic principle are verging on pseudo-religious quackery that panders to our creationist and intelligent design friends.

[mistermack]

mistermack, if we were in a finely tuned universe there would be no need for 1,000 Earths, one would be enough, and we'd never fill it. See Ringworld.

I thought about that when I wrote it, but I thought that once we got to where we are now, we would fill a second earth in no time. The population of this Earth has more than doubled in my lifetime, so we could have populated another Earth since I was born.
It just seems to me that if I was creating the solar system for man, what a waste to just make one earth when there is enough energy in the sun to keep a thousand earths going.
I haven't read Ringworld, so I don't know how they solved the population problem.
A thousand was a bit much though, just a round figure. Anyway, we would probably be fighting the other worlds pretty quickly, so maybe the growth would slow up.
.

[mistermack]

There's a lot more like this. Hence IMHO the fine-tuned universe and the associated anthropic principle are verging on pseudo-religious quackery that panders to our creationist and intelligent design friends.

Yes, the anthropic principle starts off by stating the bleeding obvious as if it's something new that nobody knew, and then jumping to the totally unjustified in a few sentences.
In any case, if the object was to create intelligent life, who says it's humans that were aimed at?
Just because we are top on this planet, doesn't mean we were the objective.
We might be just a nuisance side show, the real objective might be on the other side of the milky way, much more intelligent and much 'nicer'.
.

[amused]

As a keen botanist, I take exception to your "no weeds" criterium! Wild plants are far more interesting than the forced hybrids that fill our gardens.

I'd just like a universe without any red wasps then.

The kind that sting.

I hate red wasps.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

As a keen botanist, I take exception to your "no weeds" criterium! Wild plants are far more interesting than the forced hybrids that fill our gardens.

I'd just like a universe without any red wasps then.

The kind that sting.

I hate red wasps.

The fact that you get stung implies that they hate you too. Have you tried talking to them? Perhaps through a mediator?

[Feck]

I thought the universe was fine tuned to make black holes ? humanistz go on tell us about our destiny out there in stars (go home and watch Star Trek )

[Coito ergo sum]

What are the main arguments for and against "Fine tuning" of the universe?

Because nothing about its tuning seems very fine. It looks very out of tune, actually.

I thought it might be good to concentrate them in one thread, so I'm inviting members to post what they think are the strongest arguments for and against. ( or links to online arguments ).
I apologise if it's already been done.

Here are my own offerings : You'll see I'm biased against the fine tuning argument. ( at the moment ) but I'm happy to be converted if the evidence is there. I would like to know about the science of the argument FOR fine tuning.

1) Us calling the Universe 'fine tuned' is like a lottery winner believing that he was 'meant' to win. He can't believe that his ticket was exactly right, against the odds of millions to one. And completely ignores the fact that he is just one of millions, and someone has to win.
It's the same with the Universe, it could have possibly been in millions of different forms, but it had to be one, and it was this one.

It's like a puddle thinking a pothole was fine tuned for it.

2) Us claiming the Universe is fine-tuned for our benefit, is like a single grain of sand in the Sahara being home to a unique species of intelligent bacteria, and they conclude that the entire Sahara was created so that they could occupy that one grain of sand.

i.e. - solipsism.

3) Here is MY version of a fine tuned universe created for the benefit of man :
Just one thousand 'Earths', travelling around one single Sun, in equally spaced orbit. No need for the milky way, or the rest of the universe. So when we fill up the Earth, ( I think we already have ) we can start on Earth-2.
No nasty viruses or lethal bacteria, just the friendly ones. No weeds.

If a deity tuned us, why would there be any bacteria? Or any need for breathing? Or any need for earths or suns at all? We could just have what the early humans thought we had - ground which was flat and went on forever, and a dome of sky above us. God lived above. Hell was physically below us, and you could get there if you found the right caves. That makes much more sense as a "fine tuned" universe than the one we actually see. The only way to invent the orderly universe of the ancients, however, is to not know what it's really like and to know so little that one can theorize the world as flat and that none other exists. When we find out the Earth is spherical, however, to be fine tuned, it would be at the center, right? Otherwise, what's fine tuned about it? And, people tried to make everything "perfect" - like planets orbiting in perfect crystal spheres or adhering to perfect geometric shapes.

Some of the other 'Earths' could be lower gravity, so we could retire there when we get old, and bounce around like young things.
Nuclear fusion would be MUCH easier to manage, so electricity would be free.

This list can go on and on.
All offerings welcome.
.

None of that would be necessary for a truly "fine tuned" universe. Why wouldn't it just be a universe that allows us to travel by thought, derive the greatest pleasure out of fantastic lives that never end, with no need for energy or work or heat or cooling or anything.

[Feck]

What sensible designer would do mammal eyes the wrong way round ? .......ask canon or nikon ! don't put the wires over the front of the sensor
Or did God think squid deserved better eyes than the humins?

So the whole universe was fine tuned for US ... this whole idea is bollocks ... I've heard it all before .....isn't it more than a coincidence that earth is in the place in the solar system where water is a liquid !! ...Grow UP !

Fine tuned .....how? why you work from an almost infinite palette and then say isn't it strange that our sort of life evolved somewhere suitable for our sort of life .....Well No shit Sherlock .
The fine tuning is a great Idea for people that believe all the other shit like ID Shame even the people that propose this idea know they are lying .

Life exists that is a fact . The fact that conditions where life exists are suitable for life

Isn't it amazing that the universe is tuned so that humins cannot live in almost all of it ? guess the glass is a lot more than half full for these fuckwits

[Feck]

Tell you what why don't we waste the planets dwindling resources trying to prove that outside the Van Allen belt and in conditions of different gravity Us Great Wise impotent humins are just bags of rapidly mutating meat !

[MrFungus420]

What are the main arguments for and against "Fine tuning" of the universe?

The main argument for: Gee, everything is complicated and life is unlikely. Let's make the assumption that several of the universal constants are not constant and claim that as a reason for saying "God did it".

The arguments against: Why the assumption that constants are variable? Where is the evidence to support that. And, if they can vary, there is the research that has shown that different "settings" for those constants still can result in a (probably) life-supporting universe. Furthermore, if it is fine-tuned for life, why is 99.99999999999999999999999999999% (approx) of the universe instantly fatal to life?

[Robert_S]

Sort of an aside here, but how long do you all think it will be before the hyper-intelligent god capable of fine tuning the universe gets morphed into some benevolent creator entity fiddling with the controls making his best guess?

It's a nice piece of theological bullshit and I'd probably start writing a book about it if I were a believer.