↪ Who says life can't adopt as many different forms as existent universes? Maybe life can exist in many possible universes. The "laws" of physics are based on models of our universe, not every possible universe. — Enrique

I understand, but here's their perspective: the textbook laws of physics are our best guess at the actual laws of nature, so they are a reasonable basis for analysis.

Why the obsession with life? So what if life is only possible in this universe? How is that a problem?

Proponents of the modern fine tuning argument accept that life in this universe is fully explainable. What they argue is that life-permitting universes should not be expected. This is because there are fundamental constants in the laws of physics (like the cosmological constant, the mass of the Higgs boson, the gravitational constant...) that appear to be "fine-tuned" for life: had any of these constants differed by even a small amount, such things as chemistry would not be possible (there would not exist atoms that could form chemical bonds). They argue that these constants are finely tuned to allow life.

As I just mentioned to Sophisticat, this assumes life was a target - a design objective.

There has been a lot of discussion along these lines. John Leslie offered a now well-known firing squad analogy: You face a firing squad of trained marksmen. Shots are fired, but to your immense surprise, you find that they all missed. Are you justified in inferring that the marksmen intended to miss? Leslie argues that a similar scenario in the case of the universe's fundamental constants suggests two alternative explanations: God or multiple universes. Objections have been put forward in terms of gambler's fallacy and observation selection effect, among others. You can find many such debates under the heading of anthropic reasoning (see also SEP entry on fine-tuning). Although I believe that the considerations that I gave above preempt any such debates with respect to the universe as a whole, I still think that they are instructive. — SophistiCat

One of my hobbies (or obsessions) is to debate theists on their Fine Tuning Argument for God (here's my current one - I'm called, "Fred"). I've read a number of papers, including the SEP article, and I've read debates and seen videos where its defended. I have observed that the most common rebuttal to it is the multiverse hypothesis. I don't think that's the best approach because it concedes too much - in particular, it concedes that life needs to be explained.

Awhile back, someone on this forum posted a link to this paper: The Fine Tuning Argument. The author (Klaas Landsman) argues that the existence of life is not a good reason to infer either a designer OR a multiverse. My reasoning is based on that paper, so have a look if you're interested.

Consider the firing squad you mention. The shooters have a target. Why should we treat life as a target? Here's an outline of my reasoning:

1. There are many possible universes with a different set of values for the fundamental constants
2. Each possible universe has the same low probability of existing
3. Therefore there’s nothing remarkable about any specific universe existing (i.e. the universe is a lottery winner: someone was going to win despite every ticket holder having a low probability of winning - all had the same chance).
4. The winning universe happens to support life, but every universe begets consequences that would not obtain in the others so that has no relevant implications.

Are Americans really this stupid? — VagabondSpectre

I've never understood how people can be so confident that their opinions are true, that it implies all contrary opinions are the product of stupidity.

Such arrogance.

Agreed, but can you identify a relavent contradiction?

The notion of luck is rendered irrelevant if adequate time is available and by "adequate" I mean time in terms of googol years or larger. Even events with near-zero probabilities will actualize given the right amount of time, no? — TheMadFool

Yes - that's one way to address it, but it depends on the assumption that there is some sort of infinity of possibilities (infinite past, infinite space, infinite universes). That can be debated, and I'm tired of theists claiming I'm using the multiverse as a means to "escape" the obvious conclusion ("god").

My issue seems more straightforward - cutting the FTA off at the knees. Assume one universe: the "luck" of our existence is meaningless - no conclusions can be drawn from it.

A failure of the FTA does not prove God's non-existence. But if the FTA is a failure, it's one less reason to believe there is such a thing. I'm focusing on the alleged "luck" issue that I've seen bandied about - we're (supposedly) lucky that the fundamental constants happened to result in a life-permitting universe, and the argument is that it entails such a high degree of luck that it can't be the product of chance. If there were some meaningful probabilities involved, that might be reasonable. But it's no more meaningful than the improbability of us existing as individuals.

The way Stephen Hawking put it in "A brief history of time" if over X time you roll a trillion sided die a trillion times you'll eventually roll an 18 if you desired to roll an 18.

I don't think probability is the best way to argue for religion. — christian2017

Lots of people think the FTA is the very best way to prove God. I don't think so, and that's why I'm pondering this issue.

Hawking's right, but for the sake of discussion, I'm assuming there is exactly one roll of the dice - where each die represents a fundamental constant, whose many sides are the possible values it can take. My take on it is that there are no preexisting players who "win". Each roll is as likely as any other, and the consequences of a roll are irrelevant. The consequences are the sorts of thing that exist in the universe. These consequent existents weren't players, any more than were WE players in the procreation lottery.

The "probability" of John being born as a result of chance circumstances is a rather iffy concept: you have to make a pretty arbitrary choice of random variables and their distributions in order to estimate it. But at a stretch one can perhaps make some sense of it. — SophistiCat

Sure, the denominator of the probability is still finite - but it's so large that it makes it surprising that any actual person is alive. On the other hand, it's imminently reasonable that SOME people exist. This is the tension. It's erroneous to apply this to individuals to "prove" they shouldn't be expected to exist, because we should expect SOME people to exist.

In terms of the FTA, life (or intelligent life) is one sort of existent, but there infinitely many sorts of existent. So IMO the analogy holds.

I'm wondering if this can be described mathematically.

I was hoping for a succinct way to say it, and you gave it to me. Thanks!

I've almost always got music playing in my mind, and if I'm in a good mood and by myself and not doing anything else linguistic (which, these days, is a rare confluence of conditions, limited only to solitary hikes on particularly good days) I love to sing by myself. — Pfhorrest

Same here. Even when I'm not alone, I sometimes start singing to myself at a low volume. It annoys my wife.

I don't know how many people are like us, but I've always assumed we were pretty common. Maybe I was wrong.

Granted that materialism is true and the mind is nothing more than the brain doing its thing, what concerns me is our tendency to identify ourselves and others with the beliefs and ideas (mind-stuff) that we hold. We seem to completely ignore that we're physical beings - our bodies being considered simply as loci of ideas and beliefs, the mind-stuff. More people have died for their beliefs than their physical appearance; it gives me the impression that people consider identity and being as more mind than body., — TheMadFool

Most people are not materialists, so you can't say they're ignoring it. It seems to me it's natural to think of ourselves in mental terms. It's reasonable on cold, objective terms: at distinguishes us from one another. But more importantly, mental processes motivate us to act - we act intentionally, and we do (or try to do) what we want to do.

It seems to me that it is correct to view ourselves in this way. I am not JUST physical - I am process. A corpse is not a human person because there's an absence of process. Process is produced by the physical, but it is not identical to the physical.

It's unfortunate we die for reasons associated with brain processes, but that consequence is not a reason to abandon our natural tendency.

You do need eyes to hallucinate visually otherwise the impulses are very weak, you couldn't compare it to sight — wiyte

I agree.

NDE's entail someone being outside their body and observing some things going on around them. How can things be seen and heard without eyes and ears, and the neural networks that process the inputs? If this physical equipment really isn't necessary, why are there people who are blind and deaf?

I'm referring to a paradigm of phenomenal consciousness expounded by Michael Tye. He suggests that qualia, like redness, are mental experiences (mental phenomena). They correlate with aspects of the world (e.g. wavelengths of reflected light), and thus provide us with a capability to discriminate among the objects of the world.

When one considers the physical mechanisms of sight, I expect it would be possible to physically intervene, and artificially produce the nerve impulses that lead to the phenomenal experience, but even so, the mental phenomenon seems irreducible. We can consider it something like a hallucination, but it is a hallucination that correlates with the world.

(a) Does such a person experience redness non-consciously? (b) Could such a person experience redness non-consciously? — InPitzotl

I don't think it makes sense to say we can have non-conscious experiences. The quale "redness" IS the experience, according to the paradigm anyway.

For instance, should we say abstract objects are not composed or composable, hence are not decomposable, and that all perceptible things, and all or nearly all physical things, are composed and composable, hence decomposable?


Does it help us to understand colors, to say that our experience of colors has subjective features that are "not decomposable"? Does it help us to understand dogs, to say that our experience of dogs has subjective features that are "not decomposable"? — Cabbage Farmer

We can't fully understand redness without having experienced it. Suppose you'd never experience either red or blue, but you knew all the physical aspects of these colors (the physics of reflected light, wavelengths, the mechanisms of visual perception...). I present to you 2 balls: a red and a blue. Can you identify which is which?

Dogs are a bit different. You could learn enough about the characteristics of dogs that you could pick one out of a lineup. The difference is composition: dogs can be uniquely described by a set of properties you can recognize.

Some abstractions are decomposible, others are not. Squares can be decomposed; a point cannot.

The wording in the survey was problematic. These 2 questions were asked:
1* Do you trust the political news you are getting?

2* When they write or talk about President Trump, are most reporters trying to help the president pass his agenda, block the president from passing his agenda, or are they simply interested in reporting the news in an unbiased manner?

Consider a Democrat who believes political news reporting is not fully trustworthy. (answers "no" to the first question), but does not believe "most reporters" are either helping to pass, nor helping to block, Trump's agenda AND they believe there is some bias in the media.

There's plenty of bias in the media, in both political directions but also in terms of sensationalism. That bias toward sensationalism helped Trump get elected: every bombastic thing he said as a candidated received air-time.

Inspiring words from our beloved leader:

"President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.’ Numbers are continuing to rise..."
-- March 29, Trump's twitter

No need to obsess on infection rates and the potential for overwhelming our healthcare system. Instead let's cheer his ratings success! Way to go, Donald!

If at any time they didn't play that important part of the recording for context it was a falsehood. It gives the condemnable words context, and without them it sounds worse. Leaving it out so it sounds worse is spreading a falsehood. — DingoJones

Right...the words taken out of context sound worse than warranted by in the context of his total conversation. And that conversation just sounds like an anomaly if you ignore the context of his general behavior toward women.

No one got a false impression about Trump's character. Trumpists like you nitpick to avoid confronting that reality. Trump is a rude, arrogant, mysogynist asshole. Embrace the policies you like, but stop fooling yourself about his character.

You asked for an example of him being misrepresented in the news, which I provided. — DingoJones

You claimed it was misrepresentative to only play a portion of the pussy-grabbing audio. I pointed out that I had heard the entire audio on CNN, so you are either misrepresting it yourself, or you are referring to some occasion in which only a portion was played. Notice that you object to playing only a portion of the audio out of context, while you wish to set aside the general context I brought up. Omitting that portion of the audio, on occasion, does not result in someone getting a false impression of his character. Shouldn't that be what's important?

Lol, yes! That is their job, not going “we hate this guy, lets just go with close enough”. Its actually very important to get it as accurate as possible, to recognise distinctions between lies, errors, ignorance etc.

Those are important distinctions and again, not being accurate or open about those distinctions is costly for any kind of anti-trump agenda. It plays into his hands, it lets him accurately claim “fake news”, which obscures the truth and any lies Trump actually does tell. It allows Trump To muddy the waters. — DingoJones

Distinguishing truths from untruths is generally objective. Trying decipher what kind of untruth it was is subjective. Personally, I think it's a mistake to label all untruths "lies", but that's what's done on all sides. Obama was charged with making the "lie of the year" when he said we could keep our current health insurance. It was not a statement he made to intentionally mislead; it was an inaccurate prediction and therefore in hindsight, it was an untruth. In politics, all untruths get labeled "lies" - that's just the way it is. That's not different with Trump; the only thing that's different with him is the sheer quantity. And because the quantity is so enormous, Trump supporters delude themselves by cherry picking some statements that were not intentional lies, and then complain Trump is picked on.

A good example is “pussygate”. I felt like the incident was pretty thoroughly misreported on CNN and most other media. First, they left out what proceeded his actual pussy grabbing comment which was “...when youre a celebrity, they LET you do whatever you want” or something close to that. That part is always left out and clipped so it can be misrepresented as sexual predation. Within a week it went from suggesting it meant he thought it was fun to sexually assault women to calling him an admitted rapist.
It seemed pretty dishonest to me, and was spreading a falsehood. — DingoJones

I heard the entire audio on CNN, and it included everything you said. No one has ever suggested that this isolated clip shows he's a sexual predator, but it does add context to the looooong list of sexual misconduct : he's cheated on every wife he's ever had numerous times (including Melania shortly after giving birth); there are numerous allegations of unwelcome sexual advances; he felt entitled to visit the Miss Universe contestants while they were dressing....the list goes on. His behavior toward women is indefensible. If you don't accept that, then you're burying your head in the sand.

Another common thing I see is the conflation of jokes or hyperbole as factual claims. They do it all the time, going with the worst possible interpretation of something Trump said. I mean, I get it, Trump will hide behind hyperbole or jokes or actually lie but thats exactly why its so important not to tell lies or misrepresent what he said. Once you do that, people can say the media is misrepresenting or lying and be totally correct. Then Trump can call it fake news, and be 100% right. This provides cover for the actual problematic things he says and does. — DingoJones

Trump utters an enormous number of falsehoods.
Some are downright lies (intentional untruths), some are repeating nonsense he's heard from idiots like Alex Jones, some is just pure stupidity, and yes- some is hyperbole, and much of that is inappropriate (e.g. telling police officers it's ok to rough up the people they arrest). Is it CNN's job to analyze each false utterance and discern which category they belong to? Discerning fact from fiction seems sufficient, and Trump could avoid the negative interpretations if he'd strive to make factual statements.

Nevertheless, I see the difference between opinion and facts. My steady diet of CNN has not impaired that. Contrast that with die-hard Trump supporters who are in denial of any negative reporting about Trump. I can respect a Trump supporter who likes his policies, if they are realistic about what sort if man he is. I have zero respect for someone who make excuses for everything he does.

You can find that very esily all the time, if you compare CNN coverage with the original footage of what they cover. Of course, if you stay inside the CNN/BBC/Guardian/NYT echo chamber, you always hear the same opinion narrative. — Nobeernolife

Give me some notable examples of CNN spreading falsehoods. I want to understand what you'rw talking about.

Trump is weirdly intuitive about things. Whether it's luck or skill, I'd say skill. Nobody puts up buildings in NYC without some smarts about people and things. — fishfry

That seems to be what Trump lovers believe. Confirmation bias is a many splendored thing.

just watched a movie about unlocking more than 10% of the brain — suleman

That's a myth. See this.

As we waste our antibiotic resources in various ways (like feeding them to cattle to make them grow faster) — Bitter Crank

Antibiotics are manufactured in sufficient quantity to meet demand. If they were not fed to cattle, less would be manufactured.

Yes, she probably would have done better. Consider Trump's various failures:

In a National Emergency, Presidential Competence Is Crucial

Is there some reason this way of thinking about color is not generalizable to light of any wavelength? — Cabbage Farmer

Yes: the quality of the experience itself (the qualia). This is not decomposible.

I do. Real news can make mistakes. Fake news on the other hand "is a form of news consisting of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes ... written and published usually with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically, often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines to increase readership."
— Michael

Pretty good description of what people are regularly fed by CNN, the NYT and the rest of the so-called mainstream media.
How many have apologized for this fake Trump bashing news that was splattered all over recenty? — Nobeernolife

Seriously, when you make such a statement, it just sounds like you're parrotting Trump. Michael was referring to the original definition of "fake news" - falsehoods that get widely circulated. Trump uses the term to refer to unfavorable coverage. Avoid conflating the two, and you could then have productive conversations. If CNN is spreading actual falsehoods, that's something I want to know about. I'm also fine hearing about positive things Trump's done that CNN omitted. But be willing to discuss both the good and the bad.

No. Didn´t read it in detail, but right off the bat I see so many loaded assumptions, it is clear this is another hit piece. — Nobeernolife

Name a few of the assumptions you find questionable.

And what else to expect from the Brookings Institute.

I expect thoughtful analysis by experts. I expect the same thing from the Cato Institute and American Enterprise institute. I don't always agree with them, but its worthwhile to hear alternative, educated perspectives. You seem dismissive of any perspective you disagree with. No wonder you're so devoted to a cartoonist.

Then there's the matter of how claiming that all things that exist have existence as a common "property" is a tautology. Well, just as the statement, "clouds, snow and doctors' coats are white" isn't a tautology for I'm not here saying, "white is white" but instead drawing attention to the fact that all the objects mentioned have whiteness in common, the statement, "all objects that exist have existence in common", is also not a tautology. The claim isn't "existing objects exist", in which case it would be a tautology but about a common "property" shared, in which case it isn't. — TheMadFool

It's problematic to treat existence as a property. A property is a characteristic that some objects have, and others do not. There are no objects that lack existence.

I ask if the criticism makes sense or not. — Nobeernolife

Does this criticism make sense to you?

This article provides a very interesting perspective on the spread of coronavirus, its containment, and prospects for returning to normalcy.

Summary of the article: Strong coronavirus measures today should only last a few weeks, there shouldn’t be a big peak of infections afterwards, and it can all be done for a reasonable cost to society, saving millions of lives along the way. If we don’t take these measures, tens of millions will be infected, many will die, along with anybody else that requires intensive care, because the healthcare system will have collapsed.

You're erroneously treating "nothing" as a rigid referrent.

Consider Propositions 3 and 4:
3. Nothing is longer than A
This means: For all x: x<=A

4. Nothing is shorter than C
This means: For all y: y>=C

y and x are two different variables, having no mathematical or logical relation between them. In your proof, you conflate them (in effect).
— Relativist

I'm examining a property, here length, which x and y can share. — TheMadFool

The problem is here:

Ergo, we can combine statements 3 and 4 as:

5. Nothing is longer than A which is longer than C which in turn is longer than nothing.

In this statement, "nothing" means there is no x > A. i.e. such a thing doesn't exist. Properties are associated with existents, but you're claiming a non-existing thing has properties.

Lawrence Krauss actually does think science can speak about nothing. A lot of physicist do. — Gregory

They define "nothing" as an absence of particles (matter).

This is a wake-up call for both doctors and pharmacists to renew their search for safe and efficacious antiviral drugs. — TheMadFool

Researchers haven't been sleeping, it's just a difficult problem to solve. Polio is caused by a virus, and research led to the polio vaccine. HIV is a virus, and a number of anti-viral medications came out of that research. Influenza can be caused by a virus, and the anti-viral TAMIFLU was developed in the 1990s.

As the name implies, it says all ENERGY in the cosmos is zero. So something can come from nothing says Hawking's in Hawking's Universe documentary — Gregory

I know he calls this "something from nothing." Laurence Krauss and Alexandar Vilenkin make the same assertion, but it's still not a true nothingness. Here's an excerpt of a review of Krauss' book. The criticism is equally applicable to each of them:

“It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electro­magnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in A Universe From Nothing--the laws of relativistic quantum field theories--are no exception to this. The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on--and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story

The zero-energy model says there is no energy in the world. I don't agree with it, but that is smart people saying nothingness CAN exist. — Gregory

Zero energy models assume a quantum system exists. That ain't nothing.

Existence is (a posteriori) metaphysically necessary.
— Relativist

Not a priori? Then what does this answer? — Gregory

Correct- the op argument only establishes a posteriori necessity.

Stll, we do know that existence is at least metaphyiscally possible a priori. The residual question is: is nothingness possible?

There is no nothingness possible world, because a world is defined by its existents, not by negative facts. This provides an epistemic basis for believing nothingness is impossible, and therefore existence is necessary.

Would any atheists care to try to explain how the cosmogonic potential for reality’s existence can authentically be deemed nothingness? — Randy333

You are correct. You basically argued for the truth of ex nihilo nihil fit

You're conclusion can be stated this way:

Existence is (a posteriori) metaphysically necessary.

1. object A is the longest

2. Object C is the shortest

3. Nothing is longer than A

4. Nothing is shorter than C

Ergo, we can combine statements 3 and 4 as:

5. Nothing is longer than A which is longer than C which in turn is longer than nothing. In other words the following statement is true:

6. Nothing > A > C > Nothing (">" here means "longer than") — TheMadFool

You're erroneously treating "nothing" as a rigid referrent.

Consider Propositions 3 and 4:
3. Nothing is longer than A
This means: For all x: x<=A

4. Nothing is shorter than C
This means: For all y: y>=C

y and x are two different variables, having no mathematical or logical relation between them. In your proof, you conflate them (in effect).