Talk:Fine-tuned universe/Archive 7

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Should I post paper

Hello,

I have read one academic paper that comprehensively shows fine tuning. Can I post link of paper? A20202020 (talk) 13:07, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

No, unless it quotes reliable secondary sources. As with your previous contributions you cannot state "comprehensively" as that appears to be WP:OR and WP:FRINGE. David J Johnson (talk) 13:18, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, but as I have seen paper, it quotes more than 120 references in paper. And I may not clear but my means it comprehensively discuss fine tuning which is being reviewed and approved by reputable University, which quotes secondary reliable source A20202020 (talk) 13:27, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't matter how many sources the paper quotes. Unless the author is a clearly notable physicist or philosopher working in this particular field (i.e., they have their own Wikipedia article stating that they specialize in astrophysics), then the paper you want to include needs to be referenced by other reliable secondary sources. -Jordgette [talk] 16:11, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Paper is published by author who has 140 citations to all paper and has published more than 52 paper as per Google scholar. I give link to relible source who direct link to paper, and also Google scholar link to author which shows other works in related fields, and linked by reliable source. A20202020 (talk) 01:35, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

The number of the author's citations on Google Scholar is irrelevant. Let me try to make this easy:

1. Does author have a Wikipedia article about him/her that indicates he/she is either (a) a physicist specializing in astrophysics or (b) a philosopher specializing in astrophysics? If YES, you may include the paper in this article. If NO, got to (2).

2. Is the paper you want to include mentioned as important or significant in some journal or publication which, itself, has a Wikipedia article about that journal or publication? If YES, you may include the paper in this article. If NO, you may not include the paper in this article.

Hope this helps. -Jordgette [talk] 21:34, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello, forgive me for anything if I not talk appropriately, but I have researched on author, and author has several third party reliable sources which state author has specialization in astrophysics and also specialized in philosophy. With your permission, I may give reliable sources which shows author has specialized in given areas. And as I think, Wikipedia also required to link to third party reliable source for information for verification, but as purpose is to confirm, I may give reliable sources which confirm author is specialized in that areas. And strictly speaking publication has Wikipedia page. And as author has 140 citations to work, it may recognize as author has expertise in given areas as others have reference his works from relevant areas A20202020 (talk) 10:02, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

It sounds like the paper meets neither criteria (1) nor (2). The standard is pretty high for science articles, particularly those that tend to attract fringe theories and evangelized belief systems, like this one. -Jordgette [talk] 14:21, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Sorry I am not clear. I want to say that publication in which paper is published has Wikipedia page, and it is academic source which I find mentioned in Wikipedia as reliable source. With your permission, I would like to give source which you can review and check whether paper should academic or other?

And country in which author resides has banned Wikipedia, because of which there is almost no participation or page from that country on Wikipedia. As I checked, there is only 2 living astrophysicist from that entire country has Wikipedia page about themselves, because of which first criteria may not enough and there are other reliable source which shows author as specialized in astrophysics and in philosophy. With your permission, I would share source, and paper which community may reviews and whether it is academic publications and whether author is specialized in given area. May I? A20202020 (talk) 13:27, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Sigh. I not going to keep repeating the same thing and telling you no. So, go ahead, but someone is probably going to delete it for not meeting the above notability criteria. -Jordgette [talk] 14:43, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Restructuring

I can't figure out where to put actual content with this false conflict narrative. Will anyone really miss the lists of "he thinks X, but she says Y"? Metaquanta (talk) 09:59, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

We need to get more actual physicists involved (a physicist would understand the meaningful difference between a fundamental physical constant and a dimensioned physical constant that has dimension. In fact an entire physical description of the universe exists in nondimensional form and there will be no $c,\hbar ,G,\epsilon _{0},k_{\mathrm {B} }$ in that description to vary or have any role. All other physical quantities would be the dimensionless values normalized against their respective Planck units. Dimensional constants play no necessary role in cosmology and are quickly disposed of to avoid confusion. A good example is with the Cosmological Constant; the only meaningful value of it is ca. 10^-122.

I commend Metaquanta for getting rid of the Religion tag, this article should primarily be about physical cosmology. But, to be complete about the topic, it must retain these speculative philosophical explanations which include the common theistic explanation and the alien design explanation with qualification . The reader is not compelled to believe either.

But let's get some more physicists involved. 69.5.112.154 (talk) 20:38, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, 69.5.112.154. If you could provide a good reference for that, I'll correct all my errors and then some. I was under the impression the mass of the electron, for instance, isn't considered dimensionless, even when expressed in natural units. It's value changes with change of units, because it has dimension. Plank energy is the unit, the dimension is still energy. While the page, fundamental physical constant, supports your position, it doesn't actually seem to have supporting references. A few I read look like they contradict it.

Let's say you're correct wrt the fundamental constants, I still didn't introduce any related errors. I just removed 'dimensionless' a couple times without changing the meaning. If I've made any other mistakes, which I often do, please let me know or just fix them. This page needs a lot of work and I'd like to improve it incrementally while we wait for an expert to come along. Metaquanta (talk) 05:09, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I think the outline's headings look as they should now. Comments appreciated. Metaquanta (talk) 05:51, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

The mass of the electron relative to the Planck mass. Normally, they normalize the masses of all of the other particles to the mass of the electron (all dimensionless ratios), then the mass of the electron relative to the Planck mass is the square root of what is called the Gravitational coupling constant which is analogous to the fine-structure constant except it is about mass rather than charge. Try Googling John Baez about this or just read the wikipedia article on Fundamental physical constant to get a grip on this. There are 26 known fundamental constants at this time. As Baez has said, this number can grow or shrink based on new discoveries and new theories. But you are changing the meaning of the article wholesale and someone should stop you from doing it. 69.5.112.154 (talk) 06:33, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

"If you could provide a good reference..." my offer still stands. Yes, I'm trying to change the meaning because much of it was wrong. You should be more specific.Metaquanta (talk) 08:47, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Listen, Meta, just because you didn't explore the links cited work and comments from physicists that you removed and links at the Fundamental constants article (do you plan on bombing that article, too?), doesn't mean you should, on your own authority, be deleting supported and cited content. Such as the quote from Paul Davies. Are you smarter than this physicists, cosmologist, and author that you know better than he that "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is in several respects 'fine-tuned' for life." However, he continues, "the conclusion is not so much that the universe is fine-tuned for life; rather it is fine-tuned for the building blocks and environments that life requires."

And you deleted what Victor Stenger had to say about it. The are cited and referenced quotes from recognized authors in the topic. What are you trying to accomplish other than something that appears that you are slanting the article? 69.5.112.154 (talk) 21:10, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

So the link that you missed is at the other article, but this issue about dimensionless vs. dimensional constants is something that physicists know about which is why I can tell that this article is being chopped up by someone not sufficiently knowledgeable about the subject to do such radical editing. Why don't you just correct syntax and style instead of changing the content? Try to be more competent about the subject matter that you are changing. 69.5.112.154 (talk)

Yeah, I didn't miss that one. But WP:SPS and, as per dimensionless physical constant, it's correct (and I think clearer) to use the term, "fundamental constant."

I certainly don't claim to know better than Mr Davies. I've been working under the assumption that he's correct. If there's "broad agreement" then this article should describe what that means and what are still open questions. It should not be a list of quotations from authorities arranged such that it looks like there's some kind of conflict. Re-read the paragraph in the Disputes... section that quote appeared in:

Physicist Paul Davies asserts, "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is in several respects 'fine-tuned' for life." However, he continues, "the conclusion is not so much that the universe is fine-tuned for life; rather it is fine-tuned for the building blocks and environments that life requires." He also states that "'anthropic' reasoning fails to distinguish between minimally biophilic universes, in which life is permitted, but only marginally possible, and optimally biophilic universes, in which life flourishes because abiogenesis occurs frequently".[22] Among scientists who find the evidence persuasive, a variety of explanations have been proposed, such as the anthropic principle along with multiple universes. George F. R. Ellis states "that no possible astronomical observations can ever see those other universes. The arguments are indirect at best. And even if the multiverse exists, it leaves the deep mysteries of nature unexplained."

The paragraph is incoherent and what do you think a lay reader is going to take away from that? That what Davies says reflects scientific consensus? Or that the anthropic principle is wrong? What about the Ellis quote? Does that mean god did it?

The whole article was at some point constructed such that "fine-tuning" meant god did it and any hypothesis that mentions AP or multiverses was opposed to "fine tuning." That content wasn't "supported and cited," it was gibberish veiled in authority meant to perpetuate that idea. If you really think that's more correct then I don't think you have the competence to participate. Why don't you sign in? Why don't you stop your whining? Why do you edit-war and lie about having taken it to talk?

If you look again you'll notice Stenger's (relevant) thoughts are still there, in the Criticisms section. Metaquanta (talk) 06:54, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Actually, the remaining Stenger quote isn't relevant either. It was taken out of context to serve the false-conflict-narrative. If you read the source, Stenger is simply pointing out that the "fine-tuning" doesn't have scientists throwing up their hands and declaring that god did it. Therefore, it isn't a criticism of fine tuning. If that kind of content belongs anywhere, it would be in the Religious interpretation section. That can be another reference for "While few scientists believe a supernatural explanation necessary" but I don't think that statement requires a quotation. Metaquanta (talk) 07:43, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

No one, other than Meta, is bringing up the term or concept of "god". Only Meta is and that betrays the clear bias that Meta is shaping the article to reflect. Without any discussion of religion there simple is a controversy among physicists and cosmologists of whether the Universe is fine-tuned or not. It is Wikipedia policy (wp:balance) that "when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance. This involves describing the opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint." But Meta is inserting his or her POV for that of verifiable experts on both sides. This is contrary to wikipedia policy. Certainly tweeks to any article can be made but Meta is explicitly trying to shape the article to fit his or her POV. This is contrary to Wikipedia policy. 69.5.112.154 (talk) 17:51, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Naturalness

The introduction should not mention "naturalness". That is an ill-defined idea, and as the cited reference explains, only some arguments for "fine-tuning" appeal to any variety of it. (Nor should "naturalness" be called "scientific naturalness", since it is only invoked in one highly specialized corner of science, and "scientific naturalness" is not the term used in the literature.) XOR'easter (talk) 21:46, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

I disagree (with the mention of "naturalness" and that the citation contradicts.) See:

Advocates of the view that fine-tuning for life requires a response because life-friendly constants are improbable therefore put particular emphasis on those instances of fine-tuning for life that are associated with violations of naturalness, notably the cosmological constant.

— https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/#ViolNatuFineTuniForLife

It is ill-defined, almost as much as Fine-tuned universe is ill-defined here. Please help with these definitions! Neither are particularly well-defined in the literature either, for instance:

Any fine-tuning is necessarily a statement about one’s expectations about what would seem natural or non-tuned.

— Sean Carroll, https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.3057v1

But 'fine-tuning' has assumptions that shouldn't be ignored. Metaquanta (talk) 07:27, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

The Stanford Encyclopedia article states repeatedly that violations of "naturalness" can be considered examples of "fine-tuning", but not "fine-tuning for life". In other words, "naturalness" can be "fine-tuning" but not all "fine-tuning" is "naturalness". The current introduction says that "fine-tuning" is a violation of "naturalness", so it's wrong, and it uses the made-up term "scientific naturalness", which isn't a thing. And as Hossenfelder points out, the idea of "technical naturalness" requires quantum field theory to formulate and is distinct from "anthropic fine-tuning"; the latter rests on an entirely different logic than the former [1]. The old version of the introduction was better. Not great, but better. I'd modify the last line of it to The correct way to define naturalness is a topic of debate, and neither it nor the anthropic principle are considered scientific by a consensus of researchers. (This also eliminates the submarine link to falsifiability on the word scientific, which is both unexpected and presumptuous.) XOR'easter (talk) 15:41, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Where does it say that? repeatedly?

Views according to which life-friendly conditions are epistemically improbable face the challenge to provide reasons as to why we should not expect life-friendly conditions from an epistemic perspective which ignores that life exists. One response to this challenge is to point out that there is no clear systematic pattern in the actual, life-permitting, combination of values of the constants (Donoghue 2007: sect. 8), which suggests that this combination is disfavoured in terms of elegance and simplicity. Another response is to appeal to the criterion of naturalness (see Section 5), which would lead one to expect values for at least two constants of nature—the cosmological constant and the mass of the Higgs particle—which differ radically from the actual ones. Neither elegance and simplicity nor naturalness dictate any specific probability distribution over the values of the constants, however, let alone over the form of the laws itself. But proponents of the view that fine-tuning for life is epistemically improbable can appeal to these criteria to argue that life-friendly conditions will be ascribed very low probability by any probability distribution that respects these criteria.

— https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/#WhicSensLifeFrieCondImpr

Looks like it says "naturalness" can provide the improbability requirement for "fine-tuning for life". It's not the only way. But the other ways seem to use variants of the word "natural" without that particular technical meaning as in the Carroll quote above. Metaquanta (talk) 22:11, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

To editor XOR'easter: I tried to partially restore the edit you linked above. I don't think that's the one you meant. Metaquanta (talk) 22:33, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Section 5 turns from fine-tuning for life to the criterion of naturalness—a condition of no fine-tuning in a rather different sense which applies to theories in quantum field theory [...] Note that the sense in which violations of naturalness qualify as instances of fine-tuning is very different from fine-tuning for life, as discussed in the previous sections. [...] As explained in Section 5.1, violations of naturalness can be seen as instances of fine-tuning, but not in the sense of fine-tuning for life.

I linked to exactly the version of the introduction that I think should be restored. (I've screwed up copy-and-pasting URLs plenty of times in my day, but I double-checked just now, and I got this one right.) XOR'easter (talk) 23:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

I have removed "naturalness" from the lead.Metaquanta (talk) 09:07, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I will try to have further comments as time permits. XOR'easter (talk) 15:17, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Section title dispute

User:JackNickol is edit warring to change a section title, he has said on my talk page that The title of the section 'Religious Apologetics' is unnecessarily provoking for people with faith. "Religious Apologetics" simply means the discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse, it does NOT provoke people of faith in any way at all. Theroadislong (talk) 07:06, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

He has also posted on my Talk page and I have advised him to use the article Talk page and also warned him regarding edit warring. I completely agree with your sentiments above, I cannot see any provocation at all. I will continue to keep a close watch on the situation. Regards, David David J Johnson (talk) 11:13, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Apologetics is indeed correct terminology and it's easy to find neutral and reliable sources on the topic (of apologetics), —PaleoNeonate – 11:24, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Problems with this article

This article is very bad, and needs a lot of rewriting. I'll just write a list of some low hanging fruit, as I don't at the moment have the time to go in and fix it all:

• Alternatively, the anthropic principle may be understood to render the observed values tautological and not in need of explanation... no. This is wrong, and acknowledged as wrong by the article; you need the anthropic principle plus a multiverse with different physical constants. It's not surprising that someone will win the lottery as long as a lot of different people are buying different lottery tickets.

You might note your metaphor doesn't actually have an anthropic component. Metaquanta (talk) 03:24, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaquanta: The analogous survivorship bias is introduced by only considering those that win the lottery, but my analogy isn't relevant, the article already discusses this well enough. Volteer1 (talk) 04:49, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• Among scientists who find the evidence persuasive, a variety of natural explanations have been proposed, such as the anthropic principle and multiple universes. Same as above, that's one explanation not two.

• by 2012 results from the LHC had ruled out the class of supersymmetric theories that could have explained the fine-tuning What?? Supersymmetry is not anything close to ruled out by experimental results from the LHC, there just weren't any superpartners found at the energy levels the LHC could test.

• In "Examples", Dark energy and the cosmological constant have their own different sections, talking about the exact same thing, but purporting to be different?

• Minor point here (and not really a "problem"), but there are some other good examples that could probably be added, for instance the masses of the up and down quark, for which figure 2 in this paper from Luke Barnes would probably be a good image.

• The fine-tuned universe argument's regarding the formation of life assumes only carbon-based life forms are possible, sometimes referred to as carbon chauvinism. This is just flat out wrong - for instance, what does the number of spacetime dimensions or the value of the cosmological constant care about carbon vs. silicon based life? It's not related at all. If you want there to be a criticism section there is plenty of material to put there - e.g. for something not mentioned in this article, David Albert's arguments against the bayesian paradigm of claiming that the sensitivity of life to changes in physical constants means we can say that those constants taking the value they do is unlikely.

• First, the fine tuning might be an illusion: we don't know the true number of independent physical constants, which could be small and even reduce to one. It's not so much the number, but that we don't know what the fine tuning will be in the truly independent physical constants we eventually get out of our final theory of everything; there could still be fine tuning if there was only one independent physical constant governing the universe.

• And we don't know either the laws of the "potential universe factory", i.e. the range and statistical distribution ruling the "choice" for each constant (including our arbitrary choice of units and precise set of constants) Not that factually incorrect, just badly written. I also don't think our choice units have to do with anything.

• One is an oscillatory universe or a multiverse The cyclic model/"oscillatory universe" is a kind of multiverse, they aren't different things. This point needs to be made a lot more clear; "multiverse" here also includes that the physical constants in our universe are just different far away, farther than light will have had (or possibly will ever have had) time to reach us. This is kind of implied in the "Multiverse" section but under jargon that would not be familiar to the average reader.

• While other universes might explain any apparent fine-tuning, fine-tuning itself is not evidence of the multiverse This is a fringe view from a single philosopher (Roger White) cited to a single paper that Scientific American wrote an article on.

Maybe you should read it. Metaquanta (talk) 03:24, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• Regarding "alien design", we should probably just have a section on explanations to the problem based on design in a naturalistic sense and in a religious sense. "Alien design" makes just as much sense as other wacky/fringe/out there ideas like the simulation hypothesis as an explanation, they are the same kind of response to the problem as the religious one, just with the "designer" perhaps not being God in the traditional religious sense.

Volteer1 (talk) 04:27, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Just make sure any change is sourced to reliable secondary sources...even if some of the material presently in the article may not be. This article is one where individual editors have strong opinions, and I see a lot of personal opinion or original research (or at least unsourced research) in your notes above. Please edit carefully. -Jordgette [talk] 14:27, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I think for now I'll just remove the incorrect things that are either unsourced, or not supported by the sources cited (e.g. the supersymmetry bit). I'll have a better crack at this later when I have the time. Volteer1 (talk) 14:41, 17 February 2021 (UTC)