English

Anthropics and Myopics: Conditional Probabilities and the Cosmological Constant

High Energy Physics - Theory 2008-11-26 v2 Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We re-examine claims that anthropic arguments provide an explanation for the observed smallness of the cosmological constant, and argue that correlations between the cosmological constant value and the existence of life can be demonstrated only under restrictive assumptions. Causal effects are more subtle to uncover.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0709.0502,
  title  = {Anthropics and Myopics: Conditional Probabilities and the Cosmological Constant},
  author = {Irit Maor and Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.0502},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

revised to PRL format, additional references and discussion to related work revised

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:13:51.391Z