Thank you very much for your response and the references. The Crane paper looks particularly interesting.

Elliot

more discussion of the CNS idea, including criticism and possible variants, is in this paper of Rudiger Vaas
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0205119

Re: CNS,

Are there variants of this theory which postulate other selection mechanisms than black hole formation? Certainly it is an interesting one but not the only thing that could be selected for that would potentially lead to the emergence of intelligent life in this or any other universe.

Elliot

the answer is almost no other but I seem to recall a paper from the mid 1990s which proposed a variation of Smolin’s CNS. It may have been by Louis Kauffman. Maybe I can find it on arxiv.

to make the obvious point, black hole formation provides a credible reproduction mechanism: in the past year a fair number of Quantum Gravity papers have been written about gravitational collapse and they mostly point towards a bounce, in which spacetime continues and reexapands in a new branch from the pit of a black hole—inflation providing a fresh endowment of matter.

admittedly intelligent critters could INTERFERE and perhaps encourage black hole formation, so there could be some extra reproductive fitness associated with branches of spacetime where there were creatures willing and able to do this (so their branch or universe would pass on its characteristics to more offspring branches).

It is a thought but for me seems just unnecessary complication. the main issue is whether the universe is optimized for black hole abundance or not. it is something that ought to be able to be settled by observation, as long as the fundamental constants of physics (as they effect star, galaxy, and black hole formation) are well understood

If the constants turn out to be fine-tuned for black hole abundance, that provides for a simple explanation as follows:

Several of the papers at the October Loops ’05—an international quantum gravity conference—were about the emergence of big bangs from black hole gravitational collapse. Quantizing removes the singularity and the collapse at the pit of a hole has to go somewhere and it now looks as if spacetime may continue on out in a bounce, and re-expand. In other words stellar-mass black holes produce other branches of spacetime. The relevant quantum gravity theory predicts signature that can be looked for in Gammaray Bursts. Parampreet Singh at Penn State gave a talk about that in November, which fortunately is online.

So black hole formation provides a possible reproductive and hence evolutionary mechanism by which a set of fundamental dimensionless constants, like a set of genes can evolve.

I think this is a reasonable assessment( my struggle to geometrical propensities in regards to quantum geometries?) in expression.

Would this contradict Multiverse idealizations or demonstrate compatibility?

Are there variants of this theory which postulate other selection mechanisms than black hole formation? Certainly it is an interesting one but not the only thing that could be selected for that would potentially lead to the emergence of intelligent life in this or any other universe.

Elliot

I agree Elliot. I am hoping that I am speaking for a part of society, and if not, apologize for “imposing my thinking on them,” if it felt this way. If one did not speak about this, would the “battle not have taken it’s toll” without them knowing the results they are dealing?

Is this what those who Fight against ID are trying to do?

Who knows. Maybe a stronger resolve for “empowerment” shall arise out of the chaos, once a resolve is held too?

The time has come to severe this relationship from the work needed to do by us lay people to get to the “bottom of things.” What the underlying basis is of reality without invoking God , but at best hoping to understand our involvement in the continued expression of this reality? So, we are given options and models to work with.

regarding this

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0407213
Scientific alternatives to the anthropic principle
Lee Smolin
Contribution to “Universe or Multiverse”, ed. by Bernard Carr et. al., to be published by Cambridge University Press.

you say

I have scanned the paper and it looks very interesting. I will take some time to read it carefully.

thanks for expressing interest. I hope you do respond at more length. If you respond in your blog please call my attention to your reply in this thread so I don’t have to watch two places.

the CNS explanation of the constants is FALSIFIABLE, which is the whole point. The falsifiability claim is something you should check to see if you find it convincing because the falsifiability responds to what you say here:

I would advocate teaching that the competing explanations, all (in the Popper sense) unfalsiable (in my opinion, I am will to convinced otherwise) are multiverses, design, and blind luck.

If indeed you are WILLING TO BE CONVINCED, as you say, that one of the competing explanations is falsifiable, then here it is. Please consider, not whether you like the theory (I am not advocating it) but whether you agree that it is falsifiable.

CNS presents you with the following challenge: look at the list of fundamental dimensionless constants and find even one in which a small change would promote the formation of more stellar-mass black holes.

Very simply, the CNS explanation for the basic constants is that they are approximately optimized for black hole production. They may INCIDENTALLY favor life as we know it but this is a side effect. What the constants really favor is black holes.

Details can be found in the paper I mentioned and references therein.

It seems clear to me that the conjecture that the basic constants are a local maximum for black hole formation is falsifiable. All you have to do is find one constant (like a quark mass) which, if changed, would yield a significant improvement in the rate of black hole formation.

If the constants turn out to be fine-tuned for black hole abundance, that provides for a simple explanation as follows:
Several of the papers at the October Loops ’05—an international quantum gravity conference—were about the emergence of big bangs from black hole gravitational collapse. Quantizing removes the singularity and the collapse at the pit of a hole has to go somewhere and it now looks as if spacetime may continue on out in a bounce, and re-expand. In other words stellar-mass black holes produce other branches of spacetime. The relevant quantum gravity theory predicts signature that can be looked for in Gammaray Bursts. Parampreet Singh at Penn State gave a talk about that in November, which fortunately is online.

So black hole formation provides a possible reproductive and hence evolutionary mechanism by which a set of fundamental dimensionless constants, like a set of genes can evolve.

This evolutionary CNS theory does not say anything concerning the existence or nonexistence of a Divine Creator—-it simply offers a mechanism by which the basic parameters are self-tuning.
there might or might not be some Creator somwhere who set the whole tree-like branching process in motion—-many black holes ago, many iterations, many bounces, many big bangs ago.
But that imagined Creator, if existent, would not have needed to twiddle the knobs in order to fine-tune the basic constants of our particular spacetime branch

The fine tuning is taken care of by Smolin’s proposed cosmological natural selection process. Which, it is argued, is FALSIFIABLE. That is why it is a significant part of the discussion and why I suggested the paper to you.

Cheers,

Who

I don’t see the analogy to asking what good is half an eye. It is strained at best.

Since it is the oldest and most oft repeated, I imagine it has some creedence.

I am not young but you are right I haven’t spent much time thinking about ID. Given that it is basically creationism with a new brand name not sure I need to.

Elliot

I assume you are very young or just starting to think about ID, because “who designed the designer” is the oldest, the most repeated, and probably the weakest criticism of ID. It is also probably the most easily handled criticism of ID. It is roughly akin to criticizing evolution by asking “what good is half an eye?”

Elliot

I have scanned the paper and it looks very interesting. I will take some time to read it carefully.

Eugene,

Would you advocate the teaching of “Blind Luck Decides that We can Exist in this Universe” in public school science classes?

No. If the topic of fine-tuning came up in a tangential discussion (since it is not going to be in the curriculum) I would advocate teaching that the competing explanations, all (in the Popper sense) unfalsiable (in my opinion, I am will to convinced otherwise) are multiverses, design, and blind luck. After that, there isn’t much to say.

Sure. But

(a) I don’t think the fat lady has given up yet.

(b) Would you advocate the teaching of “Blind Luck Decides that We can Exist in this Universe” in public school science classes? (Since, as you said, both are merely opinion?)

In #37 you say
“If there is no multiverse, then some may decide that Occam’s razor comes down in the favor of design rather than blind luck. In that, Susskind is correct.”

I am very interested in getting your reaction to a testable multiverse model (very different from the eternal inflation or string vacua landscape pictures) called cosmological natural selection and described in

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0407213
Scientific alternatives to the anthropic principle
Lee Smolin
Contribution to “Universe or Multiverse”, ed. by Bernard Carr et. al., to be published by Cambridge University Press.

Susskind’s multiverse might conceivably be discarded, if it is found to have no observable consequences, and yet the choice not YET come down to blind luck versus design. As far as the determination of fundamental constants, I mean.
You might wish to consider a further possibility.

In your post #38 of this thread you say:
Susskind’s conclusion really is, as I pointed out, a Sophie’s choice; but, even as an IDer, I find that disturbing rather than a cause for celebration.

On the other hand saying “Susskind rocks” at the end of your blog of 15 December titled “Susskind’s Sophie’s Choice”
http://www.helives.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_helives_archive.html#113465921781166371
you appear to be celebrating. If it was meant ironically, a chance visitor to your site might well miss that.

I merely note the apparent inconsistency, but do not object. I wish the message in your blog was more clearly in line with what you say in this context, but don’t feel I’ve the right to criticize.

Setting that aside, I’d like to quote your post #38 because I find a lot in it:

—David #38—
This is a wonderful blog—I am glad to have found it via my site log.

I want to comment on what Peter wrote in #29, where he refers to “the damage to the public perception and understanding of science that the pseudo-science promoted by Susskind and followers” with the evidence he provides being a excerpt and a link to a post of mine.

Susskind is not the darling of this (cosmological) IDer. After all, he is out to destroy the fine-tuning. But even that is OK with me, if done with old fashioned, testable physics. The only comfort, if that’s the right word, that cosmological IDers get out of this is that Susskind’s landscape is just as metaphysical as ID. There aren’t many criticisms about cosmological ID that do not equally apply to the Landscape. (Sorry I keep adding the adjective cosmological, but I am not an IDer in the Behe-Dembski sense.) And for the same reasons that Cosmological ID should not be published in journals such as PRL, neither should Landscape speculations, in my opinion.

Susskind’s conclusion really is, as I pointed out, a Sophie’s choice; but, even as an IDer, I find that disturbing rather than a cause for celebration. I think most of us who are professional physicists, but yet have cosmological ID leanings, want physics to continue as it always has, with a search for testable elegance. Nothing would be more depressing to both the IDer and physicist within than for Susskind to influence a large segment of the HEP community.

I think Peter’s worry is misplaced. It is not the damage Susskind’s book does to public perception that is the issue, but rather the damage it might do to physics itself. Because at the heart of it, what Susskind is really saying is that HEP physics is dead. If we have just annealed into our habitable universe, any further search for truth and beauty is a fool’s errand.
—endquote—

The fine tuning is only “apparent” if you have a mechanistic explanation for it. In the absence of an explanation, merely designating it as apparent is begging the question. At least Susskind offers a possible explanation, which sort of gives him the right to call it “apparent.”

You wrote:

It’s just empty posturing by people who want to sneak religion into high-school education.

That’s a gross generalization. I and other IDers I work with have no interest in getting religion into public schools. This is no better than generalizing about an atheist “agenda” for non IDers. What’s to be gained by painting with an infinitely broad brush?

If there is no multiverse, then we just got lucky that the uniquely-determined laws of nature allow for us to be here. That statement, all by itself, is much simpler and straightforward than the invocation of a mysterious supernatural force with no role other than to fix the laws in their specific configuration.

That is merely opinion, not an incontrovertible fact. If there is no multiverse, then some may decide that Occam’s razor comes down in the favor of design rather than blind luck. In that, Susskind is correct.

Then, in June, we were told that strange quarks actually have a significant, measurable effect on the magnetic and electric properties of protons:

http://www.jlab.org/div_dept/dir_off/public_affairs/news_releases/2005/gzero.html

So at least in principle I can now imagine that removing the higher generations of matter could have a measurable effect on the electron shells surrounding nuclei, hence chemistry, hence biology. But prevent life from arising? That still looks like a really long shot.

It’s about time. It needed to be said.

Especially, for those of us on the periphery of this debate about string theory that has been reduced to all the kinds of “the wrong speculation” that that we hear of. The heart and soul of science blemished, towards continued research and developement of M theory.

If you did not see this in context of the universe, then how would you not know about the physics and cosmological approach, brought together?

Should we succumb to the leaders who would instigate “ID classification,” to have those who follow this rule of thumb, sing such praises?

I would defintiely be asking for more clarity. Is there no bubble nucleations initiated in cyclical cosmological variations, hence no return to the very beginnings we saw in the beginning of our own??

Thanks Sean

Susskind’s mistake, in his enthusiasm for the multiverse, is to suggest that without a multiverse, ID might make sense as an explanation for such fine-tunings. He unfortunately ignores the fact that ID doesn’t make sense under any circumstances. It doesn’t provide any description of the “designer” (including, of course, who designed the designer), any mechanism through which the designer goes about designing things, any criterion for deciding whether something is designed or not, and so on. It’s just empty posturing by people who want to sneak religion into high-school education.

If there is no multiverse, then we just got lucky that the uniquely-determined laws of nature allow for us to be here. That statement, all by itself, is much simpler and straightforward than the invocation of a mysterious supernatural force with no role other than to fix the laws in their specific configuration.

I wouldn’t know about terminology invented by the DI, and anyone who visits my blog would know that I (like many scientists) indeed believe that the ultimate source of the laws of nature is God. That doesn’t affect how I do science. I have no idea what your point is, and don’t know what the word “scientificness” means. I wasn’t even sure your comment was meant for me, but I seem to be the only “David” who has posted.