[asa] Re: Anthropic Principle, "proof," and "explanations"

Actually there are some predictions made about multiverses although
with our present technology we may not be able to resolve the issue in
a satisfactory manner. That's an important distinction.

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.html

<quote>
I survey physics theories involving parallel universes, which form a
natural four-level hierarchy of multiverses allowing progressively
greater diversity.

    * Level I: A generic prediction of inflation is an infinite
ergodic universe, which contains Hubble volumes realizing all initial
conditions - including an identical copy of you about 10^{10^29}
meters away.
    * Level II: In chaotic inflation, other thermalized regions may
have different effective physical constants, dimensionality and
particle content.
    * Level III: In unitary quantum mechanics, other branches of the
wavefunction add nothing qualitatively new, which is ironic given that
this level has historically been the most controversial.
    * Level IV: Other mathematical structures give different
fundamental equations of physics.

The key question is not whether parallel universes exist (Level I is
the uncontroversial cosmological concordance model), but how many
levels there are. I discuss how multiverse models can be falsified and
argue that there is a severe "measure problem" that must be solved to
make testable predictions at levels II-IV.
</quote>

What is more likely? We have no way to measure the likelihood of God
and Ockham is no help here since multiverses follows from a single
scientific theory.

What is more scientific? I do not see any way to address this. In fact
God seems to be a far more complex explanation. One may very well
conclude similarly that God is a convenient 'explanation' for
religious people who rule out natural origins of the universe for
obvious reasons.

On Dec 7, 2007 10:33 AM, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
> However, IMO the multiverse hypothesis is equally unscientific -- at least,
> not yet. No more scientific than ID or creation ex nihilo. It makes no
> predictions about our universe that can be tested, and it is actually a far
> more complex hypothesis than the idea of one God creating one world in one
> specific way. That is, it fails Ockham's razor quite drastically, by
> multiplying entities way beyond necessity, so far so indeed that we can't
> even count them. It functions, IMO, as a kind of "god-of-the-gaps" for the
> non-theist, who rules out creation for obvious reasons but still needs an
> infinite (or quasi-infinite) entity to fill in the gaps in the explanation.

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Received on Fri Dec 7 23:46:31 2007