Summations Only

Combinations of unique occurrences are common. History is full of them. Any. None.The whole fine tuning with intent argument is fallacious. You are making the same simple mistake as someone who says: "Ten million people participated in a lottery, and therefore could have won it. Mrs. Gertrude Brown of George Street Philadelphia won it. The chances of her winning the lottery were incredibly remote, therefore the lottery draw must have been fixed (intelligently designed with intent that she should win).You've spent half of this thread telling the world that you think lottery results must be fixed. The mistake that you're making is that you're seeing the chance winner as a target. You're saying: Quadrillions of different universes could have come into existence. Only one universe exists (and therefore won the lottery). The chances of that one universe winning out were incredibly remote. Therefore, the process must have been fixed (intelligently designed with intent that this universe should be here).In the lottery, whoever wins it, the result will be one in ten million. So, the chances of ending up with a "one in ten million" result of some kind is actually one. It's inevitable.In the universe scenario, whichever universe wins out, the result will be one in quadrillions. So, the chances of ending up with a "one in quadrillions" result of some kind is actually one. It's inevitable. Edited by bluegenes, : rong spelinEdited by bluegenes, : slight clarification!

That is not fine-tuning. You seem to be confusing the concepts. Fine-tuning is the actual act of tuning a universe. It is an act, not a range of values.Using our lottery example, we can calculate the odds of a specific person winning. It is an entirely different claim that a supernatural deity guided the ping pong balls to produce that specific winner. They almost always build on one another. The current state of our universe is extremely contingent on its history.

I have to disagree. When scientists write papers about the subject, they are referring to the limited range of variability for some parameter to allow some desirable or necessary result.What designtheorist cannot do is translate fine tuning by this definition into probabilities. I don't believe that anybody can do that. You cannot even get to the point of arguing about a fixed lottery until you can talk about probability. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

This is not correct. When you switch to Planck units, rather than units that are an accident of human history, the Gravitational "strength" just disappears from every equation. The reason is essentially quite simple. In General Relativity mass and spacetime directly influence each other and both a measured in the same units, the meter.One meter of mass corresponds to one meter of curvature. No "strength" or anything. Mass simply causes an equivalent amount of curvature. You could say this several ways:
"Gravity has no strength" - Since there is no constant to adjust
"The strength of gravity is what it is" - Since you could consider it "fixed" at 1:1, between mass and spacetime curvature. This ratio is not adjustable. First of all, the distance over which a force acts has nothing to do with its strength, it has a more complicated origin, related to what is known as the symmetry group of the force.Secondly, gravity is not a force in General Relativity. There is no gravitational potential field acting on an object and causing it accelerate, unlike an electric field or a strong nuclear field.
This is stated in every single major textbook on the subject. If you want I'll provide you with quotes from the most commonly used graduate textbooks on General Relativity.

You seem very confused about the use of the term "fictional" (or more commonly "fictitious") as used to describe perceived forces in physics.Centrifugal forces are most commonly described as "fictitious". This is the sort of thing one learns about at school level physics. According to GR gravity is a similarly fictitious force.

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The notion of "fictitious force" comes up in general relativity. All fictitious forces are proportional to the mass of the object upon which they act, which is also true for gravity. This led Albert Einstein to wonder whether gravity was a fictitious force as well. He noted that a freefalling observer in a closed box would not be able to detect the force of gravity; hence, freefalling reference frames are equivalent to an inertial reference frame (the equivalence principle). Following up on this insight, Einstein was able to formulate a theory with gravity as a fictitious force; attributing the apparent acceleration of gravity to the curvature of spacetime. This idea underlies Einstein's theory of general relativity.

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Wiki on fictitious forcesSo clearly the term "fictional" here is not being used in the way you are assuming it is. Nobody is suggesting that gravitational effects and phenomena don't exist. I haven't read it yet so I don't know. But I think you have demonstrated your own inability to judge the technical content of this popular science book.

Nosy originally thought you were self-deluded, but has now concluded that you are behaving not unlike a charlatan. Neither position expresses the idea that you are right.

I don't doubt that some scientists do describe it in this manner. What I am saying is that this is a bad description. When they have a lottery drawing this is not a case of fine tuning for a specific winner. Very true. As has been pointed out, we are not sure that the 4 fundamental forces can be any different, or if universes can be different.

I'm suggesting that there is nothing wrong with the scientists' usage. The manner that scientist use the term 'fine tuning' is completely correct. What is incorrect is concluding that fine tuning means that there is a Fine Tuner. Similarly, we can speak of a universe that is characterized by order without inferring an Orderer.From the wikipedia article on 'The Universe'

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It appears that many of the properties of the Universe have special values in the sense that a Universe where these properties differ slightly would not be able to support intelligent life.[52][53] Not all scientists agree that this fine-tuning exists.
[54][55] In particular, it is not known under what conditions intelligent life could form and what form or shape that would take. A relevant observation in this discussion is that for an observer to exist to observe fine-tuning, the Universe must be able to support intelligent life. As such the conditional probability of observing a Universe that is fine-tuned to support intelligent life is 1.

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According to the above, fine tuning is about the values of constants being of importance and not about whether somebody set them to important values.I think the fine tuning argument to be entirely circular. It requires that you first accept that the purpose of the universe's existence is life, despite the fact that so much of the universe is hostile to life. After accepting that first premise, it does becomes difficult to accept that an omnipotent being having such a purpose would not intervene to increase astronomical odds against his purpose being achieved. But of course, the question becomes, what purpose would such an argument serve? It could only convince someone who was already convinced that an omnipotent being had intervened.And of course, as we both agree, we know nothing about the odds anyway.

From your wiki quote:"It appears that many of the properties of the Universe have special values in the sense that a Universe where these properties differ slightly would not be able to support intelligent life.[52][53] Not all scientists agree that this fine-tuning exists."That usage still bothers me. Whether or not there is a narrow range of properties that would result in intelligent life has nothing to do with the act of tuning. For any universe we find there is probably a very narrow range of properties that can result in the unique characteristics of that universe. Every universe would qualify as being "fine tuned" which defeats the purpose of the usage.

I don't think that's true. Depending on what the characteristic in question is, there may be a wide range of properties that can produce that characteristic. And maybe there is something to be learned by evaluating how much the characteristic can be varied.But even given your statement, your argument is only that fine tuning is of no particular import. It's not really a criticism of the definition.

My argument is that fine tuning is a Texas Sharpshooting fallacy because it assumes that intelligent life was the target, and that someone was aiming for that target. Instead, we are painting the bull's eye around the bullet hole and discussing the slight variations in bullet flight that would have caused the bullet to miss the bull's eye.

And I'm suggesting that you are arguing about a fallacy surrounding fine tuning and not about fine tuning per the scientific usage. It is perfectly legitimate to explore the results of varying one or more constants, and to speak whether some outcomes are sensitive or insensitive to such variations.Yes it is possible reach some bad conclusions from such an investigation, but let's actually do that before we start insisting that the investigation is a Texas Sharpshooting Fallacy.

Designtheorist is still lying about Stenger.

I'm going to be a little slower on the trigger with the word lying. But I will say that DT's characterization of Stenger's argument does not match what I find in the text of Stenger's book. DT's argument is, in fact a quote mine. To make the further showing that DT is lying would require a belief that he has read and understands Stenger's book. I am going to take him at his word that he was unable to finish the book.I support my accusation of quote mining with the discussion below:From designtheorist's OP in Message 10First of all, it should be understood that saying that something is contrary to what is found 'in most physics textbooks' is not the same as saying that something is contrary to mainstream science. By count, and by weight, most physics textbooks still describe gravity completely in Newtonian terms, maybe including a mention of Einstein's theory. Most physics textbooks do not discuss advanced physics topics such as the speed of light, Planks constant, and of course the gravitational constant G being set to unity by a choice of measuring units.And yet that type of dimensionless analysis is a part of mainstream graduate level physics. Son Goku referred to that analysis earlier in this thread.ABE:
I'll also note, without making a showing, that electrostatic forces are NOT fictitious in the same way that either gravitational or centrifugal forces are.
end ABE.Designtheorist claims that Stenger equivocates on the term fictitious in order to make an argument that the force of gravity is arbitrary. Let's explore that claim.Stenger correctly states that gravity is a fictitious force in the same way as centrifugal force. It is not clear whether designtheorist agrees with this correct statement, but what is clearly stated is designtheorist's accusation that Stenger equivocates on the word 'fictitious' to argue that gravity can be set to whatever value we want. The claim is present in the DT quote above, and is made more explicitly in other of his postings.DT's fictional-based argument is complete hogwash. I picked up a copy of Stenger's book and I will quote here Stenger's actual argument, which we can see is infinitely more reasonable that might be gathered from DT's sound bite and 'summary'. Typos in the following are likely, and are mine.Stenger from Chaper 7.2 of the 2011 edition of 'The Fallacy of Fine Tuning.'

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We see that this is wrong. Recall that the gravitational force is fictional like the centrifugal force. No one compares the value of the centrifugal forces with other forces. It's value depends on the circumstances. So it is with gravity. The gravitational force [Stenger here means the the gravitational force relative to the electrostatic force] depends on the masses and charges of the particles. N1 is only the ratio of the two forces for a system made up of a proton and an electron. It is not the relative strength between the gravitational and the electrical forces in all cases. In fact, there is no universal way to describe the strength of the gravitational force

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In the above, only the final statement should appear the least bit controversial, and as I will show, it is only controversial when the context is removed. Continuing from 'Fallacy' Stenger continues his contrasting of the electrostatic force with the gravitational force.

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The strength of the electromagnetic force is measured by the dimensionless parameter alpha, called historically the fine structure constant, which in standard international units is [forumula not cited]. The value of alpha in our universe is currently 1/137 independent of units.

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... remove stuff of some interest, but not related to argument...

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The gravitational constant is not dimensionless, and, as we have seen is an arbitrary number, like hbar and c, that just sets the unit system. We can define a dimension less parameter [formula] to represent the gravitational force strength, but that depends on some mass m. Conventionally the proton mass is used, so [yet another forumula]. However the proton is not even a fundamental particle but is composed of quarks. In short the strength of gravity is an arbitrary number and is clearly not fine tuned. It can be whatever we want it to be.

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Stenger continues to make his point in the next chapter, but the above is enough to make my point. The short summary of the above is that when people compare the strength of gravity to the strength of the electrostatic attraction, they make that comparison using arbitrary masses and arbitrary units.Note that Stenger does talk directly about a gravitational force, so what was the purpose of labeling the force fictitious. Was it part of his argument about the relative magnitude of the fictitious force as DT says? Clearly not. That argument is based on dimensional analysis and the arbitrariness of the involved masses and charges. Instead, Stenger uses the argument to diminish the importance of the comparison, by making an analogy with the centrifugal force. That is the sole use of the fictitious forces truism.Now Stenger's ultimate conclusion may be wrong. Some of the criticisms by the authors DT cites may be correct. But you'd be a fool to take DT's word for anything. Best that you look for yourself. There is no equivocation on the term fictitious in Stenger's argument. The problems if any, lie elsewhere.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No Nukes,That was a thoughtful comment. I would really like to get this thread back to the original topic, but since you took the time I thought I would reply briefly. Hopefully, Victor Stenger will have its own thread someday. As Barnes notes on page 13, gravity can be a fictitious force in certain circumstances. However, it is not a true fictitious force in the same sense as centrifugal force because centrifugal force is always fictitious. Remember, the context of this discussion is the early universe. There are no reference frames, no special situations. The force of gravity is not like the strong nuclear force that only operates only over short distances. Gravity operates over vast distances, even the entire universe. Gravity is not a fictitious force when it comes to analyzing the early universe. I think Stenger is well aware of that. If gravity were a fictitious force in this instance, why would Rees, Hawking, Penrose etc all use the ratio of gravity to other forces? Is Stenger the only physicist who gets it right? No, just the opposite. Yes, Stenger does talk about a gravitational force. And he gets it wrong. On page 151, Stenger makes the strange statement: Again, this is not true. Actually, it is the strong force that is 137 times stronger than the electric force.Back to the comment by NoNukes: Stenger wants to diminish the importance of gravity and any fine-tuned ratio gravity is involved in... and there are a few. The payoff quote for Stenger is:"In short, the strength of gravity is an arbitrary number and is clearly not fine-tuned. It can be anything we want it to be." p. 152.The strength of gravity is not an arbitrary number. In Newtonian physics, gravity is referred to as the gravitational constant. The difference between Newtonian physics and general relativity regarding the strength of gravity is not large.But to see how Stenger contradicts himself, look to the very next paragraph where he writes:"This does not mean that the strength of gravity relative to the other forces is not important. It just depends numerically on how you define it. That definition does not change the ratio of the forces between two particles in any specific situation."In one paragraph he says the strength of gravity is an arbitrary number. In the next he says the ratio of the strength of gravity to other forces is important. Now how can you resolve that paragraph with the paragraph just above it?