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OrphanWilde comments on Open Thread May 9 - May 15 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Elo 09 May 2016 01:55AM

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Comment author: Bound_up 11 May 2016 06:19:52PM 1 point [-]

In the context of religious arguments, some say that the constants of the universe are improbably finely tuned for the existence of life and order. The constants refer to things like the gravitational constant, the strength of the atomic weak force, etcetera.

It is my understanding that the order part is key; most other possible constants wouldn't allow for an alternate form of life, for example, because everything would be so far apart as to never interact, or so close together as to never vary in its state.

Some will respond that there may be a multiverse of universes, with random universal constants, so that some improbable universes are bound to crop up.

To this, it is responded that inventing a multiverse to explain away apparently purposeful tuning of universal constants doesn't really work. It's an excuse.

Now, I know that MWI was NOT invented to explain away anything, that it was presented as a possible explanation for certain observations well in advance of this kind of argument.

But, here is my question. Does MWI limit itself to alternate universes with the same universal constants, or does it predict also the existence of universes with different universal constants?

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 May 2016 06:36:33PM 1 point [-]

But, here is my question. Does MWI limit itself to alternate universes with the same universal constants, or does it predict also the existence of universes with different universal constants?

As far as I know, we don't know why we have the physics constants we have now. There are hints that the constants may be a product of the structure of the universe (and that the constants have changed over time as the structure of the universe has developed), in which case MWI would predict universes with different constants. But there are a lot of unknown unknowns in all of this.

Insofar as MWI might predict universes with completely different physical laws - I'm unaware of any evidence for this proposition.