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Posted on 07/02/2020 9:37:43 AM PDT by amorphous
Leonard Susskind interview - If the deep laws of the universe had been ever so slightly different, human beings wouldn't, and couldn't, exist. All explanations of this exquisite fine-tuning, obvious and not-so-obvious, have problems or complexities.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Yes, it’s fine tuned- even down to the microbiological level
At the quantum level things become entangled.
The only real answers materialists have to the fine tuning argument is the “multiverse” or “many worlds” interpretations, which aren’t actually scientific arguments, since they are impossible to verify or falsify.
It will get worse for them if the evidence for consciousness altering reality keeps piling up in the quantum sphere. You could try to answer that with the “simulation” hypothesis, but that is actually an anti-materialist argument. I guess you could also answer it with solipsism, but that really gets you nowhere.
( *In some possible universe, not guaranteed to be the universe in which your consciousness is currently located.)
"Rodney, that is circular reasoning. Look, show me your Standard Model again. The gauge-symmetric coupled equation, the one that describes the dynamics of a physical system."
"Okay." Using swift finger motions McKay re-shuffled the diagrams on the imaging table.
"There, I give you the Standard Model of physics, Lagrangian style."
The female alien had her elbows propped on the glass table alongside him. "Nice. Now stop for a second. I still haven't mastered your mathematical notation yet, but just get up and take a step back with me." They did. She gestured at the table. "Just look at that, it's beauty, the compactness, the elegance."
Rodney nodded, "Yeah, there's a sublime beauty to it. It's marvelous how the motions and energies of the entire physical universe can all be represented by just five coupled sets of gauge invariant symmetric terms."
"Which set of terms is which? I'm still not fully familiar with your people's mathematical symbology."
"I know, it's a pain how mathematicians use so many different symbols all the time. Okay, let's see.." He bent over the table as she leaned in closely behind him to watch. "The Lagrangian symmetries in the Standard Model are described by five basic groups of terms, starting at the top: 1) the kinetic energies and self-interactions of the gauge bosons, 2) the kinetic energies and the electroweak interactions of the fermions - quarks and leptons, 3) the masses of the W+/-, Z, gamma, and Higgs particles and their couplings, 4) the interactions between quarks and gluons, and finally 5) the fermion masses and their couplings to the Higgs boson."
"So that means this constant here, excuse me." She was leaning in past him, her arm reaching over his shoulder to point at the table. "This one, I assume it is the coupling constant for electromagnetism?"
"Yep, that is the fine structure constant, dimensionless, the coupling constant for electromagnetism expressed in Planck units, about 1/137."
"Ah." She turned her head. "So tell me, Rodney, why is the fine structure constant that particular value? 1/137? Why not some other value?"
He shrugged. "Well, I dunno. It just is. It's a basic constant."
"And if it was slightly different?"
"Stellar fusion wouldn't work. If the value was a tiny bit smaller there would be no fusion, no stars, no suns. If it was a tiny bit larger stars would ignite too soon and burn so furiously that they would never grow in size to produce anything beyond helium so there would be no other physical elements. It would mess up everything."
"Basically the universe wouldn't work right."
"Yeah. It would be either perpetually dark or go up like a firecracker."
She leaned in over him again. "And this constant here?" She pointed.
He looked at it, then turned back over his shoulder to her. "The proton to electron mass ratio."
"And if that one was different?"
"You wouldn't get stable atoms because they'd either fly apart or collapse into neutrons, and the universe would be a goop of either all ions or all neutrons with no interesting macrostructure. Pretty boring either way."
She beamed at him. "Very good, Rodney. You just said something profound."
"Uh, I did?"
"Yes. If any of those constants were just slightly off the Universe would be, as you say, boring. And yet we know the Universe is emphatically not boring. It is full of all sorts of interesting things.."
He chuckled, "Like floating city-spaceships?"
".. like life."
He nodded, "Right, right, right. But I'm still not buying it. You're saying the universe is designed for life?"
"Rodney, isn't it obvious? Look around you. Look at your planet. Look at the physical processes that created it, and you. They are all determined by these five basic groups of terms that feature a dozen or so dimensionless constants that are completely arbitrary, any of which if even slightly different would have prevented the creation of an interesting universe, including one with a city-spaceship with Rodney McKay inside it."
"Oh bosh. I know there's a name for this.. trying to remember.. the Anthropic Principle. That explains it."
"Anthropic Principle? Let me look that up."
Her bright azure eyes rapidly scanned the reference material as the web pages scrolled past on a disc of glowing light that floated just above her extended arm. After a few seconds she said. "I see. Rodney, that's the same circular reasoning you used before."
"Hey, it's a perfectly valid objection to your claim. The universe is made just so, yes, in order for interesting structures to exist in it, yes, with a very unlikely set of initial conditions, yes. Why? Because it has to! Because otherwise the universe would be boring with no life, nothing interesting, and you and I would not be having this discussion."
"Rodney, my people realized very early that the universe is indeed designed to work the way it does. To be interesting, I mean. It's not random. There is so much evidence for it, it's overwhelming. It's embedded even in the equations themselves, how they work, and more importantly why they work."
String “theory”.
I have watched dozens of his lectures. Brilliant mind. Anyone who proves Stephen Hawking wrong is no slouch.
The multiverse theory is just the recognition that all energy evolves from a single wave function that must always fluctuate because of its mathematical form. The fluctuations produce an infinite distribution of “fields” that continuously undergo symmetry breaking that results in an infinite distribution of forces, particles, and fields. A tiny number of these symmetries result in a set of forces, particles, and fields that don’t spontaneously collapse as they evolve from extremely high homogeneous energy states (big bang) to highly differentiated low energy states (quarks, electrons, neutrinos) needed for chemistry and biology. Most of the matter in the Universe (dark matter) is still beyond our science because we evolved at such low energy states.
Just because we don’t have “all” the natural answers at this moment in time doesn’t mean we have to accept a supernatural explanation. Supersymmetry and string theory have some pretty good models that unify gravity with QFT and account for the FSC but it will take decades or centuries to prove or disprove these models. Once thing I’m sure of. Leonard Susskind rejects any supernatural explanation and is a committed atheist.
Susskind can explain his theory to God at his judgment.
For those who don’t know who Leonard Susskind is, here’s a brief background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskind
Leonard Susskind born 1940) is an American physicist, who is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics.
His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology.
He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences,and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,an associate member of the faculty of Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.
Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory. He was the first to give a precise string-theoretic interpretation of the holographic principle in 1995 and the first to introduce the idea of the string theory landscape in 2003.
Susskind was awarded the 1998 J. J. Sakurai Prize, and the 2018 Oskar Klein Medal
I think not, giving history repeating itself with the current cycle of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of the [mindless] crowds.
I don't see it. Anyone committed to some ideology, whatever that might be (i.e., atheist), isn't adhering to the scientific method.
The linked interview is the second one I’ve seen. I plan to watch more.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20970518/chapters/49863311
?
That conclusion obviously depends upon the size of one’s own universe, but certainly seems to apply to much of planet earth at this time in its history. :)
Reality is bounded by our experience and the experiences of what we interact with, directly or indirectly. With the notion of an infinite multiverse, then, our universe is a singular realization from a source of boundless, unrealized possibility. Using the congruent words of faith, it is an act of inscrutable will from an omnipotent, omniscient Creator.
It seems to me that those who would seek science to escape from that point of view are instead being driven inexorably toward it. The honest ones, anyway.
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