Hi Arlo .... as I said "great debate" - you say, you don't see it that way .... ie it's a debate ;-)
Not sure "lucky fluke" is likely to be a good enough explanation for many people. We humans as we are here and now are the evolutionary result of a great many flukes, the luck that climbed mount improbable. Modern anthropic debates are more sophisticated than that however (as I hinted in my second response to Krim). The cosmic physics appears tuned very finely to the emergence of any form of intelligent life, however you look at the numbers. Whether that needs explaining and how is the subject of much discussion. Multiverse-believers have the easiest out-clause, but I'm not convinced yet of any one argument. The weakest form of the AP's is that the tuning view is just our hindsight perspective and our psychological "need" for explanation over an above "it just is". You seem to subscribe to that. (My view is that there is more to it than that, but it's circular because all of metaphysics, physics and maths themselves are a matters of psychology, metaphor and language in the first place - very Derrida / very Rorty - very nihilist Platt or Ham would say of course.) I do not of course subscribe to the opposite extreme view either, that the anthropic tuning is evidence of a "creator's" teleological plan - though of course teleology brings us back round to causation and time themselves - and the psychological need to see "agents" in causation. This is the "whole elephant" we're talking about now. Why are we here. Why is there something rather than nothing ? Only Platt would expect pat answers, and accuse the rest of us of "beating around the bush". Even "luck" needs explaining. Ian On 3/20/08, Arlo Bensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [Ian] > This is the great "anthropic debate" about why cosmic physics seems > so finely tuned to the emergence of intelligent life (aka humanity) .... > > [Arlo] > I don't see it this way at all. If anything, "humanity" seems like > the rarest of the occurrences in the cosmos. If the cosmos were gear > towards this, I'd expect there to be a mountain of evidence that > "intelligent life" exists somewhere "out there". Don't get me wrong, > I do NOT think we are alone in the cosmos, I just think that "life as > we know it" appears to be rare, not common. Check out the Fermi > Paradox for some interesting theorizing on this > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox). > > The way I see it, "humanity" is a lucky fluke, owing its existence to > a highly _improbable_ series of events, co-occurrences and > evolutionary steps. Had it not been for that one rogue asteroid (to > over simply one extinction theory), the "cosmos" seemed perfectly > content with dinosaurs. Some, of course, posit that "dinosaurs" were > part of a large, necessary "plan" to prepare the way for an > oil-loving humanity eons later, that their entire existence was a > pre-ordained path to oilhood so that "God's Children" (us) would one > day be able to drive SUV's to work. While I understand how special > that makes some people feel, I just don't but it. We are here not by > design, but by luck, and given the overall emptiness (in terms of > intelligent life) in the cosmos, I'd say we are here by a great deal of luck. > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
