so did you hear about the philosophy major who read too many layman's articles on quantum mechanics?

[dragonladyflame]

There's this principle called the Weak Anthropic Principle. It's basically a response to the question people sometimes phrase as, "Wow, isn't it odd that the universe consists of the amazingly unlikely concatenation of circumstances that allowed humanity to come into being?" The Weak Anthropic Principle replies, "I guess so, but it obviously

Comments

[island01]

I wrote most of the first four or five sections on the anthropic principle in the wikipedia, so maybe I can help:

The main "controversy" comes from the fact that string theorists want to use the WAP to choose the universe that we live in from the "landscape" of the "megaverse". It is controversial because; A) The multiverse is a theoretical speculation that can't be proven, so it is argued that it isn't science, and B) The WAP is considered to be a cop-out on first principles, since it says virtually nothing about the stability mechanism that would necessitate the particular configuration that we ended up with.

It's a bunch of crap, frankly.

This is my blog, dedicated almost solely to the strong anthropic principle:

http://evolutionarydesign.blogspot.com/

[milliganhasears]

From a historical standpoint, the WAP problem predates string "landscape" studies, and was proposed precisely as a way out of the fact that no proposed "theory of everything" uniquely predicts the properties of the universe we live in. This gets to be quite a serious problem if you assume that there is only one universe, and is thus one inspiration for various attempts to view our universe as one element of a larger statistical ensemble

[island01]

milliganhasears

[milliganhasears]

Out of curiosity, Island01, are you a string theorist, a philosophy student, or a hobbyist

[island01]

I'm with the "some [atheist] theorists", (like Paul Davies), "disagree", category, although I'm just a student of theoretical physics and nature for too many years than I'd care to admit. The last five have been spent studying the anthropic physics

[lostshepherdess]

La la la...quantum mechanics.

So...Times Square!

Personally, I've always loved that poem/art piece/whatever. Probably because I don't work a 9-5 job in a cubicle. It actually always reminds me to never let that become my life, so I appreciate seeing it whenever I'm there.

Also, I can't BELIEVE you think of NY subway lines in terms of colours. I don't even register that they ARE different colours.

[dragonladyflame]

Really? But then how do you read subway maps?

anthropic

[ext_9992]

I've always been a big fan of the anthropic principle. I first learned it in high school in the context of contradicting a certain kind of creationist argument. This is the argument that points out the various properties of the universe that seem fine-tuned to allow an existence of life as we know it - properties like the mass of the electron, that ice is less dense than water, or the incredibly low likelihood of the triple-alpha process responsible for the existence of carbon. The argument for the existence of God points out these myriad coincidences and declares that these must have been set by the hand of God to make our existence possible

[dragonladyflame]

I love long comments! But you should get your blog back up.

I didn't know you used to be a physics major. Why'd you stop?

[bloodofchrist]

i'm far too brain-dead to grasp the quantum stuff right now. if you think of it, you should remind me to look at it again.

i often claim that blasphemy is my middle name (and sometimes people actually believe me), but that challenge is kinda scary and weird.

the seattle freeze article scared me. i was thinking of moving out there, but i need all the help socializing that i can get so the concept of moving to somewhere that people are that cold is really quite off putting.

i'm quite glad you got to the bottom of the mysterious subway poem. oh art ...
speaking of art, did i remember to send you that picture?

[dragonladyflame]

You did not remember to send me the picture. Rar! Speaking of which, would it be OK if I sent you some random cell pictures I took so you could email them to me and I'd have them on my computer? You can say no. But they're pretty, I promise!

The Seattle Freeze article also came from someone who lives there and heartily agrees with it ... but then again, if all this is leading to the establishment of meet-people groups, maybe it'll get easier to meet people in Seattle than elsewhere.

[bloodofchrist]

that was silly of me. what email address should i send it to?
and you can definitely send me pictures from cell phones and i can email them to you (though we should probably make sure the sending of this first one works first.)

[bloodofchrist]

so i sent all of them last night to an email address that i had floating around in my head associated with you. you should tell me if you received them.
(if you didn't, i also sent them to myself and can just forward them from my gmail account to you)