Stephen Hawking's latest remarks

[Ultima22689]

They should've asked Bill Maher to host the show. It would be awesome. XD

I can't wait till the new season of realtime begins.

[Ultima22689]

They should've asked Bill Maher to host the show. It would be awesome. XD

I can't wait till the new season of realtime begins.

[AdS/CFT]

On the question of the origin of the universe, there were two possible choices: 1) the universe is eternal, and God is not required; 2) the universe was created, leaving the possibility of a God doing the creation. What Hawking is saying is that even in 2), God is not required.

[joeactor]

After reading the book, I found the end to be rather a non-event.

The first 3/4 of the book does a good job explaining how science came to be, the scientific method, Newtonian physics, Einstein, Quantum physics and M-Theory.  All good stuff and I really enjoyed it.

However, the final section is kind of a let down.  Instead of giving anything solid, it's more of a shoulder shrug.

I get it.  According to M-Theory and quantum fluctuations, no god is needed.
... as long as you have as a given that M-Theory and Quantum Fluctuations exist.

SO.  Where did the laws that govern the creation of the universe come from?

Still turtles all the way down,
JoeActor

[DropLogic]

If god created the universe, and we are his special pets...why would he wait 13.7xxxx billion years to bring us kicking and screaming into said universe?
Humanity, this song ain't about you.

[AnimatedDirt]

If god created the universe, and we are his special pets...why would he wait 13.7xxxx billion years to bring us kicking and screaming into said universe?
Humanity, this song ain't about you.

You assume to know for a fact we are His only "pets".  Special I may agree with considering my belief of the reason we are in this "mess" of "The Problem of Pain".

[hackenslash]

... as long as you have as a given that M-Theory and Quantum Fluctuations exist.

Weeeellll, M-Theory and quantum fluctuations do exist. Sure, M-Theory could be wrong, but it does exist. As for quantum fluctuations, they're a matter of empirically demonstrated fact.

SO.  Where did the laws that govern the creation of the universe come from?

And this is the problem with the way scientists use the word 'universe' when writing popular science books. Our local cosmic expansion runs on a set of principles. There is no good reason to suppose at this time that they could be, or were ever, any different. In other words, the principles that our cosmic expansion runs on, as far as we can currently tell, are exactly the same principles that are responsible for its instantiation.

Positing cosmic expansions with different operating principles is useful as a thought experiment in science, because it allows yu to pose 'what if' questions. These are very useful in elucidating the principles that govern the cosmos, and are often employed as a first step in formulating hypotheses. When we think, for example, about why water always flows to find a level, we will often phrase the question in terms of 'what would happen if water could be stacked?' and proceed from there, because the questions that arise when thinking about it in that way are entirely different from the questions that arise from studying the mundane fact that water always finds a level. None of that suggests, of course, that water could behave in any other way. It's precisely the same when talking about the physical principles that govern our cosmic expansion. We ask the question, 'what if this parameter were different?' and see what questions it throws up. There is absolutely no good reason even to think that the operating principles had to come from anywhere, and every reason to suppose that they are simply brute facts, and can't be any other way. That will remain the case until such time as different principles or the parameters for given values could be any different.

This also comes back to the usual guff argument about 'fine-tuning', often citing some scientist or other as if the scientist supports the argument being made, completely overlooking the fact that, in the scientists' parlance, what is fine-tuned is not the universe, but the model under scrutiny. In other words, certain parameters that we observe must have initially fallen within a certain range of values if the model is correct. This has absolutely no bearing on the values of the parameters themselves, and doesn't suggest that these parameters have been tweaked to allow 'life' or 'the physics we know'.

[ablprop]

What about the fine-tuning that allows carbon to form from helium? That doesn't feel like a model to me, that feels like real stuff flying around inside a star. In fact, if I remember correctly from Marcus Chown's book, Fred Hoyle made a prediction that a certain resonance of carbon had to exist, or else we wouldn't be here to wonder about it. When others went to verify Hoyle's prediction, they found the resonance.

I was interested in Weinberg's analysis of that resonance. I believe he showed that while the resonance exists (as it had to, or else Weinberg wouldn't be around to analyze it), there was still wiggle room within that particular resonance, that things were only just as fine-tuned as they had to be and no more.

Weinberg talks about it here:

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~rshoward/weinberg.pdf

What I take from this is not that the universe is fine-tuned for us, but rather that we're just damn lucky to be here, in so many different ways. But while we are here, and so the universe has to be one in which we can exist, it's not an unreasonably friendly universe to us. Almost any spot in the universe, picked at random, would be deadly. It didn't have to be that way, but it is. In fact, almost any spot on the surface of the Earth, picked at random, would be deadly without technology like clothing, houses, and predator-control. Far from being fine-tuned, the universe only barely lets us in.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The puddle always marvels at the perfection of his pothole.

[hackenslash]

In fact, if I remember correctly from Marcus Chown's book,

Not to say anything about what he said about Hoyle, but I just read Marcus Chown's We Need To Talk About Kelvin and I think it's mostly atrocius, and some of the conclusions he comes to in it are utterly insupportable.

Just sayin'...