Questions like this highlight how misguided the current state of anthropic reasoning is.
When one spends enough time thinking about the anthropic principle it would seem quite reasonable to raise this question. But take a step back, and consider it a physical/scientific statement: “The universe is likely in the simplest form that could support intelligent life”. It is oddly specific. Why not say “the universe is likely the simplest that could support black holes?”, or hydrogen atoms, or Very large-scale integrations? Each hypothesis results in vastly different predictions of what the universe is like. Why favor “intelligent life” above anything else?
People may provide different justifications for this preferential treatment. But it always boils down to this: We are intelligent lives. And it is intuitively obvious that the physical existence of oneself is important for their reasoning about the universe. But the Copernican science paradigm has no place for the first-person perspective. It requires one to “Zoom-Out” and think from an impartial outsider’s view. This conflict leads to awkward attempts to mix the outsider’s impartiality and the first-person self-focus. It gives rise to teleological conclusions like the fine-tuned universe which is often used as proof of God’s existence. And less jarringly but far more deceivingly, regarding oneself as equivalent to the result of imaginary random sampling. It is perhaps unsurprising that anthropic problems often end up as paradoxes.
To resolve the paradoxes we have to at least be aware of which viewpoint we are taking in reasoning and make a conscious effort not to mix first-person perspective with the impartial outsider’s view. To lay all the debate to rest we perhaps need to develop a framework incorporating the first-person perspective into the scientific paradigm.
Questions like this highlight how misguided the current state of anthropic reasoning is.
When one spends enough time thinking about the anthropic principle it would seem quite reasonable to raise this question. But take a step back, and consider it a physical/scientific statement: “The universe is likely in the simplest form that could support intelligent life”. It is oddly specific. Why not say “the universe is likely the simplest that could support black holes?”, or hydrogen atoms, or Very large-scale integrations? Each hypothesis results in vastly different predictions of what the universe is like. Why favor “intelligent life” above anything else?
People may provide different justifications for this preferential treatment. But it always boils down to this: We are intelligent lives. And it is intuitively obvious that the physical existence of oneself is important for their reasoning about the universe. But the Copernican science paradigm has no place for the first-person perspective. It requires one to “Zoom-Out” and think from an impartial outsider’s view. This conflict leads to awkward attempts to mix the outsider’s impartiality and the first-person self-focus. It gives rise to teleological conclusions like the fine-tuned universe which is often used as proof of God’s existence. And less jarringly but far more deceivingly, regarding oneself as equivalent to the result of imaginary random sampling. It is perhaps unsurprising that anthropic problems often end up as paradoxes.
To resolve the paradoxes we have to at least be aware of which viewpoint we are taking in reasoning and make a conscious effort not to mix first-person perspective with the impartial outsider’s view. To lay all the debate to rest we perhaps need to develop a framework incorporating the first-person perspective into the scientific paradigm.