[movpasd]

This is called the anthropic principle. I personally have objections to it, specifically that due to emergence it is hard to make definitive statements about what complex phenomena may emerge in alternate universes. However, it's taken seriously by many philosophers of physics and certainly has merit.

[GoblinSlayer]

Isn't that argument from ignorance? You can consider a class of physics similar enough to our physics, it should give enough space for research.

[movpasd]

My point is that it isn't possible to determine the emergent behaviour of a complex system from first principles. So arguments of the type "these physics don't result in atoms being produced, so life can't emerge" doesn't imply that other complex structures _like_ life don't emerge.

[GoblinSlayer]

Then how do we make technology if we don't know the result?

[Qwertious]

Technology is made iteratively by repeated trial and then observed error in the physical structures we've created (i.e. we build machines and then watch them fail to work properly in a particular way).

Technology that works in a different universe without atoms, would require us to be able to experiment within that universe if we wanted to produce technology that works there with our current innovation techniques.