Anthropic principle or turtles...?

Question

I have a complicated question to ask, and I'll start by trying to draw an analogy. So the first part is, let me know if my analogy is valid or not.

As I understand the anthropic principle, it states that we fit so well in our environment because the environment shaped us; this is the only kind of environment in which we could have existed; and thus the perception that we fit well into our environment is an illusion.

The anthropic principle gives the appearance of being a result of linking theories that postulate multiple dimensions to account for things such as the weakness of gravity compared to other basic forces, with the theory that if there are enough alternate universes, we need not bother to ask why our own universe is the way it is, with us in it; we can simply assume that we are the one that randomly hit the lottery and that there are a lot of other universes out there which we can't see that didn't quite make it.

I have heard people say that this eliminates the assumption for a first cause. It may be an emotionally satisfying anwer.

However, I wonder whether the degree of emotional satisfaction the anthropic principle provides is logically consistent.

Here is where I draw the analogy: An elderly lady once attended a lecture on cosmology. At the end, she stated to the distinguished astronomer that she did not believe that the Earth was a sphere, suspended in space.

"Then, what is the Earth...?" the astronomer asked. "And what holds it up...?"

"It's a disk sitting on the back of a gigantic elephant," she explained.

"But what is the elephant standing on...?" the astronomer persisted.

"It's standing on the back of an enormous turtle," she said.

"And what is the turtle standing on...?"

"Another turtle."

"And what is THAT turtle standing on...?"

"It's no use," the lady said with a smile. "It's turtles, all the way down!"

Please understand, I am not at all saying that the Earth actually rests on an elephant, or turtles, or anything else. It is a sphere, which floats in space.

But it was when I saw the possible analogy between the anthropic principle and the apocryphal lady's theory of turtles that I became perplexed.

It disturbs me to think that the hypothesis of the anthropic principle might be, in the end, no more valid than the lady's refusal to give in. Is it subscribed to only because it is emotionally satisfying...?

I reflect that, if there are other universes, then we can define a meta-universe of all the universes. Such a meta-universe of all the universes; those which we have not seen as well as those which we have, must have had some beginning at some point somewhere, somewhen, otherwise nothing exists and I do not know of anybody that seriously holds to such a belief (solipsism) as it begs the question of who or what is doing the observing.

Is the anthropic principle emotionally satisfying only because we have not pushed back our inquiries far enough, either in time or in meta-levels of existence...?

The changing nature of the universe that we can see clearly implies a beginning and strongly implies an end of some sort. It maybe that pepole are fond of the anthropic principle because it can be used to suggest that the meta-universe including all the universes beyond the one we can see did not have a beginning; that it exists in a steady state (as we have been able to determine that our own universe does not.)

It is disturbing to think that, even if the anthropic principle is true, it does not preclude the existence of a first cause.

There is something that I am curious about.
How many people reading this have examined themselves and consider it possible that they subscribe to the anthropic principle primarily because it is emotionally satisfying, because it seems to exclude a first cause...?

I can only put this question in one category at a time, so I am forced to omit such points as

1) why anybody would choose to believe that we came from nothing and are going toward nothing;

2) that consciousness and intellect arose from unaware or impersonal sources, making personality and consciousness equivalent to the inanimate and unaware sources from which we arose; in fact, making logic irrelevant and meaningless;

3) or whether right and wrong can arise from matter and energy;

there seem to be some sort of mystical disconnects there.

If I were able, I would also put this question in the philosophy category, because the answers to such ultimate questions tend to overlap.

I am a bit shy about asking things like this because I have so often been accused of being either of substandard intellect or questionable integrity. But it does not seem to me that the anthropic principle really solves anything.

It also occurs to me that when we desire to manufacture medicines using genetically modified bacteria, or integrated circuits, we begin with a huge batch process, and eliminate all those end products that do not meet the specifications.

Agan, the above is only an analogy. But now that I have thought about it more deeply, I do not find the anthropic principle an emotionally satisfying answer to the problems of causality, of meaning and value, of the difference between good and evil, of the difference between mind and the inanimate.

I'd like to thank everybody who replies in advance, and especially thanks for being patient enough to read the entire question!

My apologies to those who answered before I was finished adding all the supplemenary details. Please feel free to amend your answers. I look forward to hearing from you

Answer 1

I recently saw a (shitty) video related to this. Called something like "The fortunate planet"... that might be way off...

Anyway it dealt with this idea, and the consequences of it, namely that if this world is so perfect almost designed for us, that we must be alone and the luckiest planet in the universe. It was of course pushing creation and had some bad science in it but most important is that it is a really self-loving connection to make (it was going off of the "Strong Anthropic Principal" There exists one possible Universe 'designed' with the goal of generating and sustaining 'observers').

First let's make sure we get this straight, the anthropic principal is ...
"In physics and cosmology, the Anthropic Principle begins with the observation that the universe appears surprisingly hospitable to the emergence of life, even complex multicellular life, in at least one particular place and time, namely the Earth. Given the extreme simplicity of the universe at the start of the Big Bang, the friendliness of the universe to complex structures such as galaxies, planetary systems, and biology, is unexpected by any normal model of turbulence driven structuring that we have ever been able to derive. The Anthropic Principle is a convenient heading for physical and cosmological reasoning that takes into account the existence of a biosphere on Earth in an essential way.

The Anthropic Principle is in part a truism, since any valid cosmology must be consistent with the existence on Earth of biochemistry and human beings. It is the balanced nature of the evolutionary physics defining anthropic significance that stands out. Similarly, all anthropic coincidences are balanced between the extremes of a spectrum, ranging from the Earth's ecosystem, to the near-perfect balance between the strength of gravitation and the cosmological constant governing the expansion of the universe."

Not the other way around (you don't seem unintelligent to me, just hard to read - you kind of say it both ways :) )

In the video the speakers go on about how perfect our planet seems to be for us... they think it is the only place life could exist. I remember them pointing out that we are in a good viewing spot in our galaxy, between a couple of arms about half way out (not too close or far from radiation or celestial activity. They seemed to think this was an amazing coincidence and neglected the fact that we would have even better viewing outside of the plane.

You have to remember we are always from the inside looking out, we have biases because of how we came about. If life developed on a planet with more infrared and less visual light, it would probably primarily see in the infrared. This is the result of evolution, we adapt to the environment and later reflect thinking it's great... it's not nessisarily some creator making the perfect world for us so that we are not tortured with being blind to the available light.

Life probably tries to start in many places and doesn't succeed in most. Eventually we too could be wiped out... maybe they won't think the location is so great when a nearby supernova kills us all off. Of course, if it destroys all humans and another lifeform becomes dominant, I'm sure some of them will think they were fortunate to have had us killed off by the supernova, while their ancestors survived.

Answer 2

I am not sure what your analogy has to do with the anthropic principle.
Perhaps, you misunderstand the principle itself...
I'll give you a different analogy, that Feynman used to suggest as an illustration to dangers of the aposteriori coclusions.
I saw a car on the street today with a plate number 3X67W. Imagine how many cars with different plates are out there. What are the odds, that you go outside, and see this specific plate number? One to a billion? Yet, that's exactly what happened to me today. Isn't it a miracle?

If you understand the flaw in this conclusion, you should have no problem grasping the anthropic principle as well. It simply says that there is nothing surprising in the fact that the environment fits us so well. Not because we were shaped by it (although, we were to an extent), and not because our universe is just one of many unsuccessful attempts (which may or may not be the case), but simply because us being here just doesn't matter very much. It matters to us, of course, and makes us give so much significance to certain properties of the universe. But what it gravity was proportional to inverse cube instead of a square? We would not exist then. But other then that, there would not be very much special about that universe, compared to this one - not any more than the license plate I saw today was special. Some superior being, looking from outside, could express his surprise then that the gravity is proprotional to exactly the inverse cube - out of all the possible real numbers, why was 3 picked out (I meant to say, that YOU could ask that question, but then rememebred, that you would not exist then, so it would have to be some other being - but it does not matter)

If there indeed were many different universes, and you chose one at random, and it just happened to be the one we can live it, that would be not any more surprising then me going outside, and seeing that particular license plate.


And to your "first cause" points... I don't see how replacing the anthropic principle with the "first cause" helps anything. Yes, you can then say, that the universe is the way it is because of the first cause? But WHY that first cause, whatever it might be, wanted the universe to be the way it is? Why did that first cause need us to exist in that universe?
Were you going to say that it is impossible for human mind to concieve answers to those questions?
Well.. frankly, I don't see how it makes it any "emotionally satisfying" at all.

This is not the only area. If you think about it more, you'll notice, that the notion of "first cause" does not really answer ANY questions - it just pushes the answers one step further, makes an excuse for not having an answer. God did not want us to know this. Or it is impossible for a human to comprehend God's intentions. Or something like that.
Does it REALLY answer any of your questions in any way other than (something equivalent in the end to) God wanted it to be so?
I say, that it does not. And that (combined with the principle of Occama's razor) I'll offer to you as an answer to why people prefer to reject the notion of the first cause alltogether.