Goodness you ask fascinating questions, A-G!!! Perhaps the matter-antimatter asymmetry apparently demonstrated in the recorded 13% CP violation might be an indication of an "in-built bias in favor of life" manifesting in the universe from the very beginning? We must ask Doc and tortoise and Physicist what they think....
[Credibility check: I spent four years at Penn working on experimental issues of B-meson detection. Some of that work became the initial trigger design of the BTeV experiment at Fermilab, which has become much more sophisticated since.]
We really don't know the origin of CP violation. The question of "built-in bias" becomes one of whether the CP symmetry is spontaneously broken or dynamically broken.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking means that the symmetry had to break somehow, but there was no built-in bias to how it broke. For example, if you stand a knitting needle up on its point, it will fall because it's unstable. After it falls, it will point at some well-defined orientation, in contrast to the radial symmetry it enjoyed before it fell. There's nothing special about the orientation, however: it had to be something, and any orientation was as likely as any other. Anyone reading any significance into the orientation is fooling himself.
Dynamical symmetry breaking means that the way in which the symmetry breaks is forced. If someone pushed the standing needle in a particular direction, for example, or if the needle fell onto a slope, the radial symmetry would be dynamically broken. But while you can question the intentions of a pusher, the slope has none.
In the case of B mesons, we can't yet say how it happens, so the question of bias is premature.
For Lurkers, here's a recap:
Within a few posts after that, betty boop introduced two major points and the thread is now redirected to a fascinating new, but related, line of inquiry. The points she raised are:
2. Tunnel vision – that the ”theory of evolution” has a very narrow focus, the speciation of biological life on earth – while biological life is only some (arbitrary) sub-view of a larger “system”. The entire biosphere seems to “evolve” or aggressively pursue life – indeed, the cosmos seems aggressive.
I agree with betty boop that aggressiveness seems to be built into the larger “system” and we’ve discussed a number of examples.
With regard to the cosmos, I’ve raised the mysterious asymmetry of matter to anti-matter and wondered whether a geometric variation at inception (big bang) would be the first indicator of aggression – sort of a cosmic "will to live".
Admittedly, I was already interested in the possibility of unexplored geometric cause. On the one hand, there is the unexpected mirror symmetry in string theory and on the other, the speculation that geometry may give rise to strings.
Certainly that is true - and to that I would add, not by itself.
However, if the asymmetry is indeed part of a greater “system” - as tortoise mentioned at post 475 noise in the Shannon model may not necessarily be random if it is part of a greater “system” - then perhaps the asymmetry ought to be recorded like a “pixel” on our screen of evidence?
In the end, if a picture emerges from all the evidence, we may have cause to suspect a bias causing the aggression (fecundity principle, I like to paraphrase as “will to live”) - right from the very beginning of space/time.
Such a bias could be physically caused by a field (inter-dimensional geometry) expressing higher dimensional mathematical structures (Tegmark).
Notwithstanding that, one cannot speak of such things without thinking of God - particularly if the picture indicates aggression overwhelmingly in one direction (intent) as the fecundity principle suggests.
Food for thought…