if the universe were unsuited for life, there would be no life to notice that and remark upon it.
True. But since a universe unsuitable for life seems overwhelmingly the more probable situation, we can still ask why it isn’t so.
(My own feeling is that the problem has to be resolved by either “God” or “a multiverse”. The idea that there’s precisely one universe and it just happens to have the conditions for life seems extraordinary.)
In addition to the anthropic type arguments, some theoretical work seems to suggest that the fine tuning isn’t. ie, that we don’t even need to invoke anthropic reasoning too strongly. Heck, supposedly one can even have stars in a universe with no weak interaction at all.
So it may very well be that, even without appealing to anthropic style reasoning in multiverses (which I’m not actually opposed to, but there’s stuff there that I still don’t understand. Born stats, apparent breakdown of the Aumann Agreement Theorem, etc… so too easy to get stuff wrong) anyways, even without that, it may well be that the fine tuning stuff can be refuted by simply pointing out “looking at the actual physics, the tuning is rather less fine than claimed.”
True. But since a universe unsuitable for life seems overwhelmingly the more probable situation, we can still ask why it isn’t so.
(My own feeling is that the problem has to be resolved by either “God” or “a multiverse”. The idea that there’s precisely one universe and it just happens to have the conditions for life seems extraordinary.)
My understanding (I’d have to dig out references) is that the fine tuning may not be as fine as generally believed. Ah, the wikipedia page on the argument has some references on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe#Disputes_on_the_existence_of_fine-tuning
In addition to the anthropic type arguments, some theoretical work seems to suggest that the fine tuning isn’t. ie, that we don’t even need to invoke anthropic reasoning too strongly. Heck, supposedly one can even have stars in a universe with no weak interaction at all.
So it may very well be that, even without appealing to anthropic style reasoning in multiverses (which I’m not actually opposed to, but there’s stuff there that I still don’t understand. Born stats, apparent breakdown of the Aumann Agreement Theorem, etc… so too easy to get stuff wrong) anyways, even without that, it may well be that the fine tuning stuff can be refuted by simply pointing out “looking at the actual physics, the tuning is rather less fine than claimed.”