Pevaquark Doesn't Like Fine Tuning Apologetics and Neither Should You

Faith & Science Conversation
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This is an important point. Fine tuning is often mischaracterized as saying only our set of constants results in a habitable universe. But it doesn’t make such a strong claim. Rather it states that if you vary our constants by a “small amount”, the resulting universe is sterile. We are on an unstable equilibrium akin to a ball on the top of a hill. There may be other hills with unstable equilibria, or maybe even valleys with stable equilibria, but you can’t get to them via small variations of our constants.

Sorry, I cringe when when I hear the Adams puddle applied to fine tuning. To me the puddle argument is meaningless. At best it applies locally to a “Privileged Planet” argument. But nobody, when all is said and done, is surprised how perfect the earth is for us. Whether you think God made it to suit us perfectly or evolution will naturally produce a perfect match between life and environment, the privileged planet and the Adams puddle are, to me, sort of “duh” arguments.

Fine tuning, on the other hand, is not a local but a global argument. It says nothing about suitability for “our kind of life” but for any kind of life. And unlike the privileged planet argument there is a group that, generally, is quite surprised by the fine-tunings: scientists. (Well, at least physicists and cosmologists etc.)

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I think the default of accepting expert consensus is a fine one, and I’m not faulting you for adopting it. What I’m saying is that you have to listen closely to what the experts are actually saying. In the case of fine-tuning, the consensus is that there is something going on with the physical laws of our universe that we do not understand. There is no consensus that the fine-tuning problem implies an intelligent creator. I am not disagreeing with the consensus view, and nothing I’ve written (I think) contradicts anything in the Barnes paper you linked to.

In the case of Behe, on the other hand, what the experts are saying is that Behe is wrong about evolution.

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Hi Steve, I’m very glad you have said this, because it helps clarify where there has been a misunderstanding.

I have said several times that I am NOT talking (at present) about the theistic argument, but about the science. Yet Matthew asked why, if I was right about fine-tuning, the experts weren’t all believing in God (or words to that effect), and you have mentioned an intelligent creator. You seem both to have blurred the science to the apologetics.

So I agree with what you have said here. (1) The experts think there is a fine-tuning “problem” to resolve, and (2) there is no consensus about this implying a designer or creator.

But Matthew has disagreed with (1), and it seems with you when you say “the default of accepting expert consensus is a fine one”. He thinks, contra the experts, that fine-tuning has not been demonstrated because we don’t know the possible ranges of the parameters.

I hope that clarifies things.Thanks.

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But what exactly does everyone think the “problem” is? Is it simply that we’re holding a winning ticket and mind blown when considering the odds against that (as I think you might be saying)? Or is it that various constants emerge as we begin to learn what is going on and how things work in the universe and we don’t know why they are what they are or whether they could be otherwise (as I think at least Mathew is saying)? Do all the experts whose opinion you cite in favor of your own opinion directly express what they see to be the problem in exactly the manner you convey it here?

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I wasn’t applying this to the fine-tuning discussion which I’m happy to leave between you and others here as the main feature of this thread. I was applying it specifically to those who think it philosophically significant that we can thrive only in such a minuscule portion of the cosmos.

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Ah, thanks for that. My hair-trigger needs a trigger guard.

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I used to have a hair-trigger but then I went bald.

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Steve,

Are you familiar with the book, A New History of Life by Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink?

They document of many changes in oxygen level and climate that appear to have worked together over long periods of time to produce the biodiversity of today. This story is much more complicated than the simple progression that Darwinian natural selection indicates, nor is it a matter of fine tuning.

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I think what now? Here are few quotes from our interactions that demonstrate otherwise…

Also, I’ve uploaded a new video on the odds of making a star (and why we don’t know), outlining Smolin’s calculation and Figure 21 from Barnes’ book. Note: the end has a lot of things that I appreciate that Barnes does!

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So basically, the probability of our universe could go anywhere from 1 (the constants can’t vary) to 0 (the constants can assume any value >= 0), which is a really vague statement. Did I get the argument right?

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Matthew, now I’m confused! For you also said:

So I understood from all that that you didn’t agree with the statement that the universe appears to be fine-tuned for life, and that you disagreed with the statement “of all the possible universes defined by the ranges of parameters and laws allowed by theoretical physics, only a very small number would permit life.”

So can I ask you directly please, do you accept those statements or reject them? I am not talking about numerical probabilities (I think they are indicative but not necessarily accurate) and I am not talking about a theistic argument, just the statement that is the basis for scientific fine-tuning.

Perhaps will find we have been discussing at cross purposes. Thanks.

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Is there any good reason/argument based on physics to why we should believe that these constants could vary or that they couldn’t (just in terms of yes or no, not determining a precise range)? Or is it completely “we have no idea”?

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I understand the idea of “all the possible universes defined by the ranges of parameters” as a purely hypothetical exercise involving arbitrarily changing the values of important constants.

What I don’t understand is the part tacked on at the end “as allowed by theoretical physics”. It seems to legitimize what starts out as purely hypothetical fiddling with numbers into a claim that mainstream theoretical physics vouchsafes the resulting hypothetical universes as ones that might just as easily have arisen instead of the one in which we actually live. Is that intended?

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What statements? I agree with all my statements I made earlier if that’s what you’re asking.

I would have hoped by now I’ve amply demonstrated that ALL numerical probabilities are just hogwash. We can’t even say if they are ‘accurate’ or ‘not accurate’ as we know nothing about what they can be.

Which is what now? That we can model such parameters in various space scans seeing which combinations of values allow for physics we know are essential to life like ours. I can’t even say that any of these windows are ‘narrow’ because again, I don’t know what values they can possibly take.

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Hi Mark, I can answer your questions from what I have read. I’m not sure if anyone else here would answer the same, because I am honestly quite confused about what others think. But I will try to represent fairly what I have read.

All except one (provided you don’t think by “exactly” that my words are as precise as theirs). In the list I have read and quoted, there are Lewis & Barnes, Aron Wall, Martin Rees, Paul Davies, Lee Smolin, Roger Penrose, Leonard Susskind who conclude the universe is “fine-tuned” (without any necessary implication that there is a designer). Barnes lists more than 20, including the last 5 of those. The exception is Sean Carroll.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by “hypothetical”. The exercise is theoretical in that none of them is actually capable of building a universe to test their ideas. But isn’t just a vague hypothetical because it is using the same laws, tools, understandings and numbers as cosmologists use in everything else they do, such as developing an understanding of the history of our universe.

It is mainstream theoretical physics. I am only a layperson who has done a little reading, but Barnes’ list is virtually a Who’s Who of respected cosmology. As far as they can tell, if the universe arose by chance, all these other possible universes are as likely. And if the multiverse hypothesis favoured by so many of them is actually true, many of those other universes also exist. But we can’t observe them, and most of them no intelligent life could ever appear in them.

So that is my understanding from a reasonable amount of reading. I suggest you read Barnes’ paper, ignore the maths and the equations if the scare you as much as they sometimes scare me, but read the text, and see for yourself.

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Hi Matthew, I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. Can you please clarify whether you agree with these three statements (shown in bold):

  1. In the space of possible physical laws, parameters and initial conditions, the set that permits the evolution of intelligent life is very small.

  2. Or expressing the same idea differently: In the set of possible physics, the subset that permit the evolution of life is very small.

  3. The probability which Penrose calculates for the low entropy origin of the universe cannot be considered precise, but is nevertheless indicative of the enormity of the degree of fine-tuning he was discussing.

Thanks.

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Matthew can speak for himself (of course), but I have two detailed and one overarching reasons why I would not agree with those statements as worded. First, the space of “possible physical laws” doesn’t belong here; as I noted above, Barnes explicitly rules out drawing this kind of conclusion about possible laws. Why he included that phrase in the conclusion I don’t know. My second quibble is that I don’t think cosmologists have fully ruled out large parts of parameter space, but rather what they done is show that the structures that make up our universe (galaxies, stars, molecules, atoms) would not exist (at least in a life-friendly form) in those parts of the space. Physics is not up to the challenge of deducing what other structures might form given arbitrary parameters values. I could be mistaken about this one, but I’ve never seen that kind of calculation attempted.

My overriding concern, however, is with the meaning of “possible” in the first two statements (“probability” in the third is worse – I’ve previously rejected probability calculations). If “possible physical parameters” means “the parameters we can possibly write down in our existing physics models”, then sure, that’s an accurate description of what the experts have done as I understand it. That’s where their expertise in physics lies. However, if it is taken to mean, “parameter values that could have been instantiated in this universe”, then no, I can’t agree with that. We have no physical models that predict the possible values of parameters in a universe, and all the expertise of physicists and cosmologists doesn’t supply an answer.

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Very small? I wouldn’t know what very small means for choosing parameters of universes. Compared to what we can make on Earth and measure (like gravitational waves) these numbers are very precise.

Nobody knows what the set of possible physics is… so absolutely disagree here. Perhaps what you are looking for is when physicists set boundaries arbitrarily for their parameter space scans, the valid windows tend to be a small portion of their parameter space scan.

Penrose’s number… maybe I can try to make another video for you. All that it means is that because the odds of getting such a low entropy universe were so ridiculously low, Penrose concluded that gravity was not doing anything in the early universe (the curvature tensor was equal to zero). If gravity was not able to act, then the early universe naturally arranged into its highest entropy condition (that of a spread out gas) - which is an incredibly unlikely configuration when gravity is acting but the most probable state when gravity is negligible. It definitely does not demonstrate any fine tuning of any sort.

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Hi Stephen, Matthew,

Thanks for your replies. It seems you both have similar objections, though perhaps yours, Matthew, are the stronger of the two. I’m glad you noticed that the first two are direct quotes from Barnes’ paper.

It is clear then, Matthew, why you don’t like fine-tuned apologetics. You don’t agree with these qualitative statements of “fine-tuning”, you don’t think the numerical probabilities of the improbability of fine-tuning have any validity, and you therefore (presumably, we haven’t discussed this) don’t think there is any scientific basis for the logical apologetic argument.

Yet it remains true that Barnes can quote a Who’s Who of cosmology in support of his conclusion, and my more limited reading suggests he is fair here.

So there is an interesting dilemma. Why do these cosmologists (if Barnes has quoted them fairly) have such a different view to you too? Are they being cavalier with the science? Are you being too conservative? Are you or they missing something?

I have a few ideas, in another comment.

Thanks again for clarifying exactly what you both think.

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Hi Matthew, Stephen, et al,

I have been trying to get my head around why so many cosmologists conclude there is fine-tuning, but you two think we don’t know enough to describe the sample space of possible universes. Here’s my thoughts so far.

Barnes’ definition is based on “possible universes” allowed by theoretical physics. That seems to me to mean if it’s not ruled out, then it’s possible, according to what is currently known. I think you two mean there should be a known physical reason to define the range. But I think, based on Lewis & Barnes’ discussion on pp 278-281, that is distorting the meaning of “possible”.

If the possible ranges may be narrower than allowed by current theoretical physics, as Matthew suggests, it seems to me this is claiming there may be some aspect of physics that is not yet understood which would rule out the larger range. For that claim to be accepted, we would need to form a hypothesis, test it and show it is both viable and actually reduces the ranges. Until then, the ranges remain “possible”.

This understanding would of course affect how the fine-tuning theistic argument is presented and how probabilities are calculated. I have no doubt that the argument can be presented with greater certainty than it should, but I also think it can be presented with appropriate uncertainty. And as for the probabilities, Lewis & Barnes say (pp 282-288):

”Our claim is that fine-tuning claims can be understood in the context of objective Bayesianism, and that the difficulties faced in calculating the relevant probabilities are of the same kind as those faced in analysing any physical theory.”

But even if we had a new model, I’m not sure that we have dispensed with fine-tuning. We may have shown that a particular parameter couldn’t have been very different, and therefore was quite likely to be life-permitting, but it could be argued that we have made the range of that parameter fine-tuned. i.e. we have replaced one form of fine-tuning with another. This is the part I am struggling to get my head around, but it seems to me that this would be true unless we had a theory of everything that explained why things couldn’t possibly have been at all different. But experts like Rees say it doesn’t look like the fine-tuning can be explained this way because the constants look random and unrelated.

Perhaps they are all wrong, a theory of everything will be discovered and apparent fine-tuning will be explained as just a phantom. But that hope is hardly science yet. Current physics predicts well and is giving answers. It is what we base everything on until and if a better model is worked out.

So I think we have no choice but to say that the current physics of fine tuning is not able to be explained either by chance or necessity (a grand theory of everything), and we have to base any science and any philosophy on that until and if a better model comes along. I think that, when understood properly, the objection of unknown ranges doesn’t change that, because it doesn’t change the original definition. I thunk we should work with the concept of “possible” and make sure that any fine-tuning theistic argument reflects that uncertainty.

That is the best I can come up with for now. I hope it helps the discussion. Thanks.