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

In principle testable versus untestable are two very distinct
possibilities. The latter one is guaranteed to remain scientifically
irrelevant.

On Dec 8, 2007 5:05 AM, David Heddle <heddle@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is nothing in the articles from Tegmark that I have read that
> constitute a legitimate scientific test. Please correct me if I am wrong.
> Furthermore, his writings on Level IV mutliverses sound more religious than
> many sermons I hear on Sunday, and I attend a conservative church. I seem to
> recall some possible tests using wormholes--which themselves have never been
> detected. If so, there is little difference between using a wormhole to
> detect another universe than proposing to find an angel, and then ask the
> angel if God really exists. The distinction that "it is in principle,
> testable" has limitations in its power to denote a theory as scientific.
>
>
>
> On Dec 7, 2007 11:45 PM, PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> > 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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> >
>
>

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Received on Sat Dec 8 14:23:42 2007