Normal universe model: The universe has no bias towards supporting life
I think it only looks like there’s a problem because you haven’t separated this into a ‘chance’ hypothesis and an ‘ensemble’ hypothesis, such that we have three initial hypotheses.
Suppose that you are a gambler and a dealer wants you to determine whether or not zer dice are biased. The thing is, ze never lets you observe a dice roll; you’re only allowed to see how the dice landed after they have been rolled. Every time ze goes to roll the dice, you have to leave the room. Over and over again, each time you enter the room, you observe that the dealer has rolled a double six. If our hypothesis space is really limited to these two hypotheses, then the probability of biased dice should skyrocket, which is, as far as I can tell, the point that you’re making in the article above.
But there may be a hypothesis outside of your hypothesis space. Suppose the dealer secretly only lets you into the room if ze rolls a double six. The key here is that our observations of the dice are subject to a selection bias.
It would be really surprising to see a double six if it had been rolled after just one trial (because the probability of rolling at least one double six in one trial is ~0.027), but it would be expected if there had been many trials (because the probability of rolling at least one double six, in say, 200 trials, is ~0.996). And it seems like a sort of explanation to say to the gambler that even though the prior probability of a double six being rolled in any given trial is quite low, it’s not quite so surprising to see it if there have actually been many rolls that you could not observe, since we would either see that outcome or see no outcome at all.
“Suppose the dealer secretly only lets you into the room if ze rolls a double six”
You seem to be proposing that we should have an alternate hypothesis:
“Our observations are filtered by the requirement of us being alive”
However, this isn’t an alternate hypothesis as in both the Normal universe and the Magical universe it holds.
To make it clearer, if I an examining two hypothesises:
1) “Barrack Obama is human and he is president of the United States”
2) “Barrack Obama is human and he is not president of the United States”
And if your alternate hypothesis is:
3) “Barrack Obama is human”
Then you haven’t actually created a new separate, hypothesis, just a hypothesis that is a superset of the other two.
Anyway, your post seems to just restate the anthropic argument. I explained in my post that this is can’t be applied here because it is necessary to be comparative between the hypothesis, while the way the anthropic argument is being used there only considers a single hypothesis.
Not sure why you’re thinking about these hypotheses as supersets and subsets of one another. If I wanted to get formal with it, I’d describe the hypotheses as programs. The design hypothesis would be an agent program that outputs our local universe by building our universe the hard way. The chance hypothesis would be a set of physical constants with rules determining the time evolution of reality that outputs our universe, and not an entire multiverse of which our universe is a small part. The ensemble hypothesis would be an even simpler and more fundamental set of rules than in the previous program, maybe with some constants as well, and it would output a multiverse, some parts of which are hospitable and even identical to the previous program’s output. It confuses me to think about these hypotheses as subsets of one another, because it makes me think of substrings. These programs would not be substrings of one another. Their output would be though, because they all output us observing our universe. We’re supposed to be talking about hypotheses, not output.
I don’t think there’s actually a problem here.
I think it only looks like there’s a problem because you haven’t separated this into a ‘chance’ hypothesis and an ‘ensemble’ hypothesis, such that we have three initial hypotheses.
Suppose that you are a gambler and a dealer wants you to determine whether or not zer dice are biased. The thing is, ze never lets you observe a dice roll; you’re only allowed to see how the dice landed after they have been rolled. Every time ze goes to roll the dice, you have to leave the room. Over and over again, each time you enter the room, you observe that the dealer has rolled a double six. If our hypothesis space is really limited to these two hypotheses, then the probability of biased dice should skyrocket, which is, as far as I can tell, the point that you’re making in the article above.
But there may be a hypothesis outside of your hypothesis space. Suppose the dealer secretly only lets you into the room if ze rolls a double six. The key here is that our observations of the dice are subject to a selection bias.
It would be really surprising to see a double six if it had been rolled after just one trial (because the probability of rolling at least one double six in one trial is ~0.027), but it would be expected if there had been many trials (because the probability of rolling at least one double six, in say, 200 trials, is ~0.996). And it seems like a sort of explanation to say to the gambler that even though the prior probability of a double six being rolled in any given trial is quite low, it’s not quite so surprising to see it if there have actually been many rolls that you could not observe, since we would either see that outcome or see no outcome at all.
Does that make sense to you?
“Suppose the dealer secretly only lets you into the room if ze rolls a double six”
You seem to be proposing that we should have an alternate hypothesis:
“Our observations are filtered by the requirement of us being alive”
However, this isn’t an alternate hypothesis as in both the Normal universe and the Magical universe it holds.
To make it clearer, if I an examining two hypothesises:
1) “Barrack Obama is human and he is president of the United States” 2) “Barrack Obama is human and he is not president of the United States”
And if your alternate hypothesis is:
3) “Barrack Obama is human”
Then you haven’t actually created a new separate, hypothesis, just a hypothesis that is a superset of the other two.
Anyway, your post seems to just restate the anthropic argument. I explained in my post that this is can’t be applied here because it is necessary to be comparative between the hypothesis, while the way the anthropic argument is being used there only considers a single hypothesis.
Not sure why you’re thinking about these hypotheses as supersets and subsets of one another. If I wanted to get formal with it, I’d describe the hypotheses as programs. The design hypothesis would be an agent program that outputs our local universe by building our universe the hard way. The chance hypothesis would be a set of physical constants with rules determining the time evolution of reality that outputs our universe, and not an entire multiverse of which our universe is a small part. The ensemble hypothesis would be an even simpler and more fundamental set of rules than in the previous program, maybe with some constants as well, and it would output a multiverse, some parts of which are hospitable and even identical to the previous program’s output. It confuses me to think about these hypotheses as subsets of one another, because it makes me think of substrings. These programs would not be substrings of one another. Their output would be though, because they all output us observing our universe. We’re supposed to be talking about hypotheses, not output.
The single unbiased universe, multi-verse and biased universe are not subsets.
I was simply stating that the anthropic principle is a principle that applies to any of these models, not it is not its own separate model.