| >doesn't invalidate the appearance that the fundamental constants of the universe were fine tuned for the production of complexity/life. I think it's the other way around, it's because we are complex reasoning forms of life that we must observe fine tuning of physical constants, necessary for the emergence of complexity. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_Bias I also came up with my own variation of the anthropic principle: - 1. Extend the anthropic principle beyond physical connstant. Include factors such as the goldilock zone from planetology, the symbiogenetic origin of eukaryotic cells, the presence of the moon, etc ... - 2. Rethink the "anthropic situation" as a collection of coincidences. It doesn't directly "select for" observers, but for the right coincidences that allow them to exists. Two paths open for us from here: - 3.1. Either God (or whatever phenomenon can explain the presence of the right coincidences) exists and we were dealt with the right set of coincidences. - 3.2. Or alternatively, this collection of coincidences was built up by a random sampling process. If this is the case, then we should expect this collection to contain *superfluous* coincidences that have no impact on the existence of observers. Imagine you lost the key to your house and someone cuts a key at random from a bit of metal, which luckily turns out to unlock your door. This key has more chances to feature superfluous, redundant notches, than to be an exact copy of the original key. ---- This brings a counterpoint to the cognitive perspective on pattern recognition and could be used to challenge or refine our understanding of why we perceive certain phenomena as 'coincidences' (for instance why the Moon/Sun ratios are the same for both their diameters and distances to the Earth, which allows us to observe quasi-perfect eclipses). This superfluous anthropic principle, in this case, suggests that these perceived coincidences might have an actual basis in the physical properties and probabilistic events of the universe. In other words, it is because God doesn't exist that we can see 'meaningful' coincidences "hinting" at its existence (from the perspective of magical thought). |