Re: Sabine Hossenfleder reports on a study that finds that the universe is not fine tuned for life

On 11/25/24 2:51 AM, Ernest Major wrote:

On 24/11/2024 21:40, John Harshman wrote:

On 11/24/24 8:44 AM, Ernest Major wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXzV7zdl4oU

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Interesting paper, but I find her delivery annoying. It seems that we're supposed to like a scientific result to the extent that it argues against a theory she dislikes for unexplained reasons. And why does a lack of fine-tuning argue against a multiverse anyway?
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 I think that the argument is that in a multiverse the majority of observers exist in universes that are "fine tuned" for the existence of observers, and therefore if you pick an observer at random it is unlikely that it will be in a universe which is not fine tuned. That we find ourselves in a universe that it not fine tuned (at least according to the reviewed paper) is contrary to the expectations of a theory incorporating multiverses. But I saw no quantification of how unlikely this observation is, and regardless I'm cautious of drawing statistical conclusions from samples of one.
 

I suppose it's an application of the principle of mediocrity. We should expect to be near the mode of a distribution. But if we aren't, is the simplest explanation really that the distribution doesn't exist?