schrodinger's backside

(This isn't an exact quote; I'm compressing your conversation a little.) This is like asserting that chopsticks are "fine-tuned" for eating tomato soup. Sure, you could do it (just dip 'em in and lick), and it's better than nothing; but obviously what's fine-tuned for soup is a spoon.Your response is, to me, as nonsensical as saying "but if you wanted to eat tomato soup with chopsticks, and if for some reason spoons were physically impossible, well, then, chopsticks would be fine-tuned for eating soup." It doesn't make any sense to me - it's the "fallacy of the looming caveat", if I can coin a term. I can imagine what a universe fine-tuned to be the very cradle of life would be like; and a universe where life clings tenuously to a blue planet of maybe one to a galaxy, like lichen on a rock surrounded by desert, isn't it.

But that's my point, exactly. The universe isn't fine-tuned; what's being fine-tuned are your assumptions, leading to a conclusion of fine-tuning. Right, but an argument from what isn't known doesn't get very far with me. Sure, it's possible. It's possible the alternative is true, as well.All that, to me, adds up to too much uncertainty to conclude fine-tuning.

Well, sure. We don't know how wide that range actually is, or even if these constants aren't simply derivative values of some simpler, base variable.And to say that "life as we know it becomes impossible" may be true, but it's hardly significant - it's completely unknown how many other forms of life there could be that we don't know, and what kind of lifeforms could be supported by other "settings" for these universal options.We just don't know how contingent any of these supposedly tuned values actually are. Maybe there's a set of physical laws that governs how universes can be created and restricts the settings to certain outcomes. Or maybe there's not. Who knows? In the face of all that ignorance does it make sense to talk about tuning? I don't see that it does.