Rationally speaking, is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry and science education. For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptic's Doug. Welcome to, rationally speaking, the podcast, where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense, I am your host, Massimo Luchi, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Gillard. Julia, what are we going to talk about today?

Masimo Today we're going to tackle the anthropic principle. Oh, boy. Yes, it has many variants, but it's either an observation of or an explanation for the fact that there is the series of surprising, seemingly surprising coincidences in the structure of our universe that if any one of the many fundamental parameters of the physical universe had been even slightly different, the universe would not have been able to support life. So today we're going to ask which forms of the anthropic principle are well supported and logically coherent and how surprised should we be that our universe is the way it is?

All right. So one way to explain before we get into the we need at some point to get into the history a little bit of the principle, because as you as you mentioned, there are many different varieties of it. And this is a topic that is both important, especially for people who want to understand anything about the history of the universe, but also very complicated because it gets really complex, really, really fast and and confusing really fast.

But before we do that, let's let's talk about sort of the intuitive version of the ontology principle, which is not an official version. It's just a way to understand what we're talking about.

Well, first, maybe we should explain why the anthropic principle was even developed. Why why the universe? Why some people feel that the universe seems to have been fine tuned.

So all of these fundamental constants in the universe seem to have these very narrow windows of values that they could have taken that would have allowed for life to develop. So, for example, if the strong nuclear force were just a few percentage points higher, the universe would be all helium, or if it were very slightly weaker, no helium at all would have formed and there'd be nothing but hydrogen. If the expansion rate of the young universe right after the Big Bang had been slightly higher, the density had been slightly lower, no galaxies would have coalesced, and so there would be nothing in which life could have developed.

And if the density had been a little bit higher or the expansion rate had been a little bit lower, the universe would have collapsed in on itself again right after being created.

So and these are just a few examples, but there's a number of other fundamental constants in the universe that seem to have been seemingly fine tuned in order to create the kind of universe in which life ever even had a chance at developing. Right.

So the typical counter to that, the obvious the obvious one is so what it's what's what's so special about life?

OK, so it happened that what spooked is the rest of the world know. Right.

So but but but unfortunately, the somewhat answer, as much as I'm actually sympathetic to it, it's not enough. And the reason it's not enough is because of this analogy that that had been proposed in the context of this debate. So imagine that that you are in front of a firing squad. I hope that's not going to happen any time. But imagine you are in front of that square firing squad, right? And so there are ten people pointing.

I don't know how many normally that are on a firing squad, do you not? I have no idea.

But let's say ten, because it makes it easy to the calculations. And let's say that these ten people are loading their their rifles and they're pointing at you and you hear the shots. And then you realize that you survived the firing squad, not a single bullet had hit target, you're not even wounded, nothing.

Well, you could say also what clearly I'm alive now because they missed and there is nothing particular to explain. You know, I'm happy to be alive. That can't be by law. They can't shoot up again if they if they miss you. So you're free to go or you can be a little more reasonable.

But I say, how did that happen?

Because the chances that 10 people who presumably are trained, at least to some extent, to shoot at a target and they're firing simultaneously at close range, do you that all 10 of them are going to miss the chances of that are astronomically low? That is that that analogy encapsulates the problem with anthropic principle or at least the problem. The general principle is trying to get it.

There is you know, you can't just shrug it off as saying, oh, well, it just happened that way because it's an amazing set of coincidences.

If you want to look at it from a statistical perspective and anything that is amazingly coincidental, it's reasonable to imagine it requires some kind of explanation.

So the reasoning in this this thought experiment, this analogy is that it's so incredibly unlikely that just by chance, all 10 of these gunmen would have missed or in, you know, in our universe that all of these concerns would have been set at exactly the right levels for life, just by chance that we should conclude that it's actually more likely that it wasn't just chance that there are some reason that the constants were the way they were. There's some reason the gunman either intentionally missed or that the execution was sabotage.

And of course, the step from there is very short from making the front, from making that observation to jump into the conclusion that there must have been some kind of intelligent design. Right. Right. I mean, not everybody that that deals with in principle, in fact, makes that jump by the jump is you can see why it's very easy to make, because in the case of, again, the analogy with the firing squad, then immediately you had to think that somebody paid off the soldiers or somebody surreptitiously changed the bullets to blank some something must have happened.

That was certainly not just a matter of statistical coincidence.

So this is essentially the strong anthropic principle. You'd say there seem to be essentially two forms, the weak and the strong anthropic principles. Right. Would you call this the strong anthropic principle?

If you invoke any kind of intelligent design type of explanation, then you're definitely a strong, strong version of the principle. So let's talk about the difference between these two. Unfortunately, there are two at least two different versions of the strong principle and two different versions of the weak principle.

So this is going to take a second to get to get around to the original phrase, anthropic principle goes back to 1973 to Brendan Carter. And and he proposed the weak version, which is called WAPT Swap and the strong version, which is called Sappi Sape. So according to Carter, I'm quoting now directly so that I'm not going to be we're not going to be accused of making up stuff here. For Carter, the weak version is this. We must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.

What he meant here was simply this, that if you pick a random point during the history of the universe, not all these random points in time in spacetime are in fact equally likely to find life present.

And that's if you think about it. That's pretty, pretty obvious, right? Because if you pick a time to early close to the Big Bang, then galaxies are not formed and therefore life was not possible. If you pick a point too late in this or the universe into the sometime in the distant future when the universe has expanded dramatically and it has cooled down dramatically, then the thermodynamics are such that life is probably not going to be supported.

So he was just talking about how surprising is it that we're at this particular point in time in the universe and not how how surprising is it that the universe is constructed the way it is?

Right.

So it was saying, you know, there's nothing to be surprise here, but there is the knowledge, the acknowledgement that this particular time in the universe this time, of course, it didn't mean today. You meant this range. Large range of several millions, probably hundreds of millions of years is not a typical moment in the history of the universe. So far, so good. Now, then he talked about the strong version.

Carter talked about the strong version which says the universe must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage, or as he put it, to paraphrase Descartes, I think therefore the world is such as it is.

Descartes famously said, I think therefore I am right now. What does that mean here?

He says, well, clearly we also have to conclude that the universe is made in such a way that makes it possible for observers, for sentient observers and self-aware observers to be there again, noting that this is an observation.

It's not necessarily an explanation of. The fact is simply saying that, OK, we do not live in live in a in a Random Moment or time in the universe and in fact that random then non Random Moment in time is such had to be such that intelligent life could evolve. Right. OK, that's not too bad, the trouble really started a few years later, so this was 1973. In 86, a book by the Entropic Cosmological Principle was published by John Barrow and Frank Tippler.

Now, Frank Tippler went on to write a lot of nonsense later on, which probably colors my my perception of of tippler. For instance, he wrote most recently The Physics of Christianity, where he tries to show that physics, fundamental physics, actually confirms the history of Christianity and the truth of Christian doctrine. You know what I can think about that.

I have some suspicions right now.

Byron Tippler came up also use the words weak and strong and troubling principle. But they gave them, interestingly, some quite different definitions from Carter.

And this is where, as I said, the thing becomes interesting according to the weak anthropic principle.

The what is this?

The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable, but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exists sites where carbon based life can evolve and by the requirements that the universe be old enough for it to have already done so. Now, this is just a little stronger version of what Carter was saying. They're essentially saying, look, again, we're not in a random place in the universe.

And the constant the physical constants are also not random, because if you pick and if you pick up a random, the chances that you do get something like life are very, very, very tiny.

And then they say the strong version of their principle is the universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history.

Notice that we used the word must, OK?

And the reason that they're concluding that is that if it didn't have to apriori somehow develop these constants necessary for life, then it would have been just so incredibly unlikely that they would have happened just by chance if they hadn't already been constrained without saying even more than that.

I think that what they're saying is that the universe for some reason that, of course, they don't specify must have those properties that led to life and in particular to intelligent life. That is, there was a constraint, a reason from the beginning that the universe had to be that way and couldn't be otherwise.

But their reason for thinking that is that it would be just too unlikely to happen just by chance. OK, that's right. The reason is similar to the analogy of the firing squad.

OK, so about the firing squad example.

It seems I've heard this example before, this analogy, and it doesn't actually seem to be a very apt analogy to our universe taking the values that it did, because if you're going to say that an outcome is surprising, you have to sort of have defined ahead of time what the relevant outcome is that you're interested in.

And then if it's very unlikely and it happens, then you can be surprised.

But if if something happens and you hadn't ahead of time to find what outcome you were interested in, then no matter how unlikely the resulting outcome is, it's not necessarily surprising.

So that's right.

I remember an anecdote that Richard Feynman, he before giving a lecture one day, he said to the audience, ladies and gentlemen, you'll never believe what happened to me.

On my way over here, I saw a car with the license plate, HHG three seven five seven.

I mean, what are the chances of that? And his point, of course, was that every license plate is incredibly rare. If he had, you know, before leaving his home, said, I wonder if I'll see a license plate with a, you know, three seven five seven.

And then he did. That would be incredibly surprising. But he didn't establish that come ahead of time.

So this is sort of it's also called the sharpshooter fallacy, that you fire a gun at a blank wall and then you go up to the bullet hole and you draw a target around it like, amazing.

So amazing. I hit the target. Right. So, OK, so in the in the firing squad example, ahead of time, you were like, oh, man, I really hope I live.

But what are the chances of that then you live and that's really surprising.

But obviously there was no one around ahead of time to to wonder if there would be life. And so the fact that there's life is not necessarily.

I think you're absolutely right. And in fact, what you're doing there is, I think, two things. First of all, you're you're you're a counter example of the plate highlights the danger of metaphors. Right. Once you start thinking about the atomic principle in terms of the firing squad, then you really start thinking that there really is a problem, that it really is. This is really something amazing that needs an explanation. But if you think about the same problem in terms of the license plates, then all of a sudden this disappears into an unknown problem, a non-issue.

Now, the the thing that keeps this issue of the anthropic principle coming back, however, is that we don't know at the moment in which situation we are. We don't know whether we are in the situation of the firing squad or in the situation of the of the license plate. And the reason and we don't know is because as you as you point out, we have to have a baseline and we don't have a baseline.

We do not have an actual actual actual knowledge of the statistical distribution of the physical constants, so when these people say, for instance, when some of these people are interested in writing about the underlying principle, say, well, it is very unlikely that the physical constant, let's say the gravitational constant, should take that exact value instead of any of an infinite number of possible other values.

They're making a big assumption. They're making the assumption that, in fact, the gravitational constant could take any of an infinite number of values.

In other words, they're assuming that there is a flat uniform statistical distribution of values. But what if there isn't? What if, in fact, the gravitational constant only could take one value or maybe only one of a very small range of values, then it wouldn't be at all surprising that the gravitational constant is the way it is.

Right.

So if if we were to somehow find some way that these fundamental constants were actually all linked so that they weren't all independently arriving at the exact value needed to support life, but that say, if one were determined you could somehow deduce the others, then it would be much less surprising and much less requiring of explanation. Right.

So which means that the real problem is that that principle is trying to get at is where do these fundamental constants come from? What what is the origin?

What is what are the physical constraints that determine the fundamental concern? And that is a serious problem in physics. I mean, that is, in fact, one of the things that fundamental physicists are interested in. Now, before we go on and that and that line, however, let me bring up another couple of of anthropic principles, because as we said earlier, there is a variety of them and some of them become pretty funny.

I read somewhere that there are actually 30 someone counted 30 different. That's just the way we won't go through all of them. That's just a bit. Now we want to get all of them.

But Berent tippler later on added another version of the principle, which they call FAPE final anthropic principle. And this one says, intelligent information processing must come into existence in existence in the universe. And once it comes into existence, it will never die out.

Wow. I wonder where did that come from? Well, that's tipplers idea of merging physics and Christianity.

So he's saying essentially that the idea of of perennial life in some sense, in the Christian sense of rebirthing under after death and all that is in fact, has, in fact, physical foundations. And the physical foundation is that life in the universe not only had to come into existence, but in fact, once it comes into existence, never dies out. And now how does you know that outside of reading in his own very special way, the New Testament?

I have no idea. This is clearly not science. Our listeners can't see the face. I'm making nothing it now.

But maybe we should make a video podcast at some point.

Then there is John Wheeler, who came up with this idea of the participatory anthropic principle, or Pappe, which states that states that observers are necessary to bring the universe into being while necessary.

What do you mean? I mean, this seems like arguing back to a philosophical philosophy of idealism where the universe is here only because we can think of it, that if we stop thinking about it, then it doesn't exist. Because what he's saying is literally that observers are necessary to bring into existence the universe. This is a clearly misapplication of basic principles of quantum mechanics, you know, quantum mechanics. There is a thing called the observer effect, which essentially says that certain quantities and quantum mechanics are going to be known only after, only if you do an experiment only at the moment in which you do an experiment.

Only when you measure the position of the electron, you're going to be or the be the electron or whatever, or the spin of the electron. You're going to be able to know it. There is no way apriority before you make the measurement, which is called quantum mechanics, the observer effect. Wheeler has basically made a cosmological version of the effect and he claims that the entire universe wouldn't exist unless we were thinking about it.

Now, I wonder if our listeners can spot what the basic fallacy there is.

If the universe, if if observers are necessary to bring the universe into existence, where are these universe, these observers, before they think about the universe? Are they somehow outside of the universe?

Are they inside of the universe? I mean, who are these observers? Where are they located?

That's a good thing. You warmed me up first with the final anthropic principle because otherwise my eyes would really hurt from all the role that they're doing now.

I did my warmup. Oh, amazing.

And then finally, of course, I cannot we cannot simply do a show like this on a private principle without mentioning Martin Gardner's sarcastic version of the principle. He called it completely ridiculous anthropic principle or crap or shrub content.

And that's my favorite, actually.

I'd like to just go back to one of the less outlandish formulations of the anthropic principle. Let's so let's let's talk about the weekend tropic principle as it's as it's commonly used. It's saying that we shouldn't be surprised that concerns are the way they are because conditional on someone being around to observe them, they had to be that way. And so it's not surprising.

And so this seems almost tautological.

But it occurred to me that it actually only it should only apply if you have multiple universes or at least multiple opportunities at a universe. Right.

Because right. Because then even if this particular set of constants is extremely unlikely, if you have lots of different chances for it to occur, then you'll get, you know, one or two cases in which they do. And then, of course, the observers in those universes will look around and go, oh, my God, what are the odds?

So so that does seem to resolve the the seeming spookiness of these constants values. But that's only true if you have lots of universes. If our universe is the one and only universe that has ever existed, then how does the anthropic principle actually help explain why the constants are the way they are?

That's a good point. Now, that brings us to the actually the serious part of this discussion, which is, as we mentioned earlier, there is, in fact, a problem to be solved. I mean, there is a question there, a fundamental question, which is where do the fundamental constants in physics come from?

And essentially, there are only two major classes of answers available at the moment. One is the one you just talked about, that is the idea of a multiverse, the idea that there are multiple universes out there, each one of which is a random combination of physical constants.

And, of course, as unlikely as it is one of those universes and had to be or likely was going to be our own particular universe, because if you generate an infinite number of combinations, eventually you're going to hit presumably on one that looks like ours.

In which case, of course, the fact that we're so special is not really that surprising because we're not so special. We're just one of an infinite number of universes.

That's the multiverse theory, which is which comes out of fundamental physics today.

There is an alternative and the alternative is, in fact connected, interestingly, to one of our latest episodes. And that's the one on string theory. So string theory is the alternative version of the solution.

Basically, you can think of string theory as an alternative solution to the problem posed by the ontology principle, because string theory says that in fact, it's not true that the fundamental constants could take any of an infinite number of values. They had to take only a very small, very particular kind of value. And that particular kind of value is predicted by string theory. You know, with string theory becomes an explanation for why the fundamental constants actually constrains apriority before you even got the universe started.

Right. So those are the two alternatives. Now, the problem with those two alternatives is this. Neither one of them at the moment at least, is empirically testable. We do not have access to multiverses, so we can't we cannot observe other universes with different laws of physics. And as we heard from our guest recently, Peter Voit string theory itself is not testable, at least again at the moment. So we do have two possible answers to the question of where do the fundamental constants in physics come from?

Unfortunately, neither one of them is empirically testable, which means and neither one at the moment really is science is just some interesting speculation.

So to wrap up, I should say that one common response that I've heard is that we don't we don't actually need an explanation that the constant had to take some set of values and they just happen to take this one. And it only seems surprising to us because we happen to be the life that evolved.

But but the constants could have easily taken other values in some other form of life, could have evolved that we, with our current brains in the current state of the universe, wouldn't even have recognized as a potential form of life. One of our commenters, Antonio Manetti, said, you know, I wonder if we aren't suffering from a lack of imagination regarding what life is or could be throughout this or any other universe. The only problem I have with that kind of response, that sort of philosophical resolution to this problem is that the vast majority of the sets of values that the constants could take lead to universes with such high entropy that it's really hard to imagine any form of life that could possibly evolve in a universe that's, you know, completely helium or completely hydrogen.

Right.

But on the other hand, you know, the value of that particular answer is this, that why are we putting such a such a high value on life and in particular intelligence like intelligent life, when when when it seems pretty clear at the moment, at least from what we know, that the overwhelming majority of spacetime, meaning both the universe as it is now and the universe as it has been and will be in the future, is, in fact empty space.

So really what the entropy principle seems to be explaining is not as much the presence of life, but the presence of galaxies and planets in rocks and stuff out there. Dust out there. All right. But that's much less sexy, obviously.

And so people are not interested. It seems to be the seems to me as the word entropic, in fact, implies, if a fundamental. There of of anthropocentrism that we know somehow we are the most important thing in the universe where the pinnacle of the universe, so we require a special explanation and a special set of conditions for coming about.

Boy, that talk about hubris. Right.

All right. We're going to wrap this section of the podcast up and move on to the rationally speaking, PEX. Welcome back. Every episode, Julia and I pick a couple of our favorite books, movies, websites or whatever tickles our rational fancy. Let's start, as usual, Mutualistic.

Thanks, Massimo. My pick is the TV series House. It's a really entertaining show about this cantankerous genius doctor diagnostician named Dr. House, who takes on all of the incredibly difficult cases that none of the other doctors could solve. And every episode is him and his crackerjack team racing against the clock to try to figure out what's wrong with the patient before the patient croaks. So I love the show.

And well, actually, before I go any further describing how, I just want to back up and say that in general, when when you're watching a TV show or a movie produced by sort of mainstream by Hollywood, you may have noticed that things don't tend to work out very well for the skeptic.

But plotlines tend to be resolved in favor of the believer.

Like either you have now the skeptics saying, oh, of course, there aren't monsters under the bed.

And then, you know, he gets eaten by a monster or the X Files being the obvious. Oh, right.

Of course. Yeah, well, that's just one among many. It's really prevalent or or the skeptic is sort of the killjoy who says no, well, there's no such thing as miracles. And then, you know, it's Christmas and the person is miraculously saved and a star twinkles in the sky. And, you know, somehow this is seen as the much more heartwarming narrative. And so this is what we get. And so I bring this up because house one of the many reasons I enjoy House is that I always saw it as taking the opposite tack.

Dr. House is a confirmed atheist and a diehard rationalist and empiricist, and he's continually getting these patients who come in believing that something supernatural is happening.

And he's convinced that he can find a rational empirical explanation for what's going on.

And he does. And so I would I would watch these episodes and go, wow, that's really it's just so refreshing.

And then what I realized recently is that the episodes are actually they're very carefully, I think, very carefully and intentionally constructed to be interpreted in like according to whatever you already were inclined to believe.

So I started realizing that if they only seemed to be coming down on my side as a skeptic because I'm I'm viewing them as a skeptic. But if I were a believer, they would I think they would seem to be confirming what I already believe. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples. There was an episode. This is an every single episode, but it's happened maybe two or three times that I've seen and I haven't seen every single episode.

So in one of the earlier seasons, a woman is really freaked out because she thinks that she's been coerced, that she's been fated to die soon. And so House takes on the case because he wants to prove to her that there's really no such thing as curses and fate. And he can you can show that she's not really dying.

And so the reason that she thinks she's cursed, that there's this this cat that she thinks can predict who's going to die and it'll come sit by the bed of whoever is going to die. And so it's come sit by her bed. And so she's all freaked out and the house eventually solves spoiler alert. Sorry about the problem. And he figures out that, oh, the cat goes to sit by whoever's the warmest. And so the patients who are dying, they have a fever.

They're their beds are warmer. And so the cat sits by them. So he figures this out and, you know, he cures her. And, you know, he says, see, there's no such thing as curses and fate. I figured it out. And she says, oh, no, but there was a curse. And by figuring it out, you broke the curse. And so. Right. So I'm watching this and I'm like, oh, this is a show about, you know, the narrative of the show is about people with superstitious beliefs and, you know, the triumph of of empirical investigation over those beliefs because House actually solved it.

And then I realized that if I were a believer, I would actually see that and come away believing that the show was actually on my side. And there was there was another episode recently in which a guy believes in karma and he believes that the reason that his son is dying is that he had so much good fortune in the rest of his life. He, the father that his son is dying to sort of cancel out the good fortune. So he he gives away all of his money, hoping that that will somehow magically save his son and how it actually does cure the son.

And the father is convinced that that's because he gave away all his money.

Which one? The cause in which one is there. Right, exactly. And so as skeptics, you watch that and you're like, yeah, this is a show about the psychology of people who are superstitious and who will do anything to try to save their son. And at the Bali road. Watch that, I'm sure, and say, well, of course, you know, the son was how solve the case right after the guy cured. Right after I gave him his money.

That's right. That's a pretty big. And if actually actually this this is a good introduction to my pick, which is a website called In the Philosophy Dotcom. And as in and this is a Blackwell publisher website and it's about a collection of books about philosophy and popular culture that have been produced over the last several years.

I've actually participated in a couple of these of these volumes.

And the basic idea is to. A pop culture icon or phenomenon like a TV show or a movie or a director or something that is that resonates with in terms of popular culture, and then ask a bunch of philosophers to write essays aimed at the general public that used to show the movie or whatever it is, as a way to introduce the public to certain aspects of philosophy. And interestingly, if you look at the website right now, as I'm doing the first title that shows up is House and Philosophy.

So clearly the show that show has inspired a lot of philosophers to write about tapping my phone calls again.

It could be, but there are several others and it is these books are actually very well written for a general public level and they tend to focus on particular aspects of philosophy. So, for instance, there is a fairly old one about Woody Allen and philosophy in that one. If anybody's familiar with Woody Allen's movies, of course, it deals with existentialism, with metaphysics and and to some extent with with issues of ethics and relationships.

But if you pick you know, if there's one in science fiction and sort of for instance, in particular, Battlestar Galactica and philosophy, and that one deals if people are familiar with that particular show, with issues of artificial intelligence, of course, and also of the rights of machines or versus human beings and things of that sort. So it's a really very, very good collection of books. Blackwell is not the only one that puts out these things.

There are several publishers over the last few years that have done this, which have over a period of years revolutionized the whole idea of popularizing philosophy. It used to be that the only way to pauperized philosophy was to write yet another book about summarizing very briefly what a bunch of dead old white men used to think. And now it's become much more dynamic, is much more interesting, and it generates a lot more discussions and I think understanding of philosophy.

Do they do they talk about the Homer Simpson's classic posing of the omnipotence paradox? Could God.

Yes. In fact, one of the best. That's right. One of the best books in the in the series is The Simpsons and Philosophy. And yes, absolutely.

That's their cool. OK, we're going to wrap up this episode of rationally speaking. Join us next time for more explorations on the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

The rationally speaking podcast is presented by New York City skeptics for program notes, links, and to get involved in an online conversation about this and other episodes, please visit rationally speaking podcast Dog. This podcast is produced by Benny Pollack and recorded in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York. Our theme, Truth by Todd Rundgren, is used by permission. Thank you for listening.