Related papers: Which fine-tuning arguments are fine?
The possibility of a quantum system to exhibit properties that are akin to both the classically held notions of being a particle and a wave, is one of the most intriguing aspects of the quantum description of nature. These aspects have been…
Although various limits on the predicability of physical phenomena as well as on physical knowables are commonly established and accepted, we challenge their ultimate validity. More precisely, we claim that fundamental limits arise only…
Why is gauge symmetry so important in modern physics, given that one must eliminate it when interpreting what the theory represents? In this paper we discuss the sense in which gauge symmetry can be fruitfully applied to constrain the space…
This paper explores the argument structure of the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the electroweak gauge theory of the Standard Model: the so-called Higgs mechanism. As commonly understood, the Higgs argument is designed to…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
It is commonplace in discussions of modern cosmology to assert that the early universe began in a special state. Conventionally, cosmologists characterize this fine-tuning in terms of the horizon and flatness problems. I argue that the…
Assuming the presence of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) with a characteristic scale M ~ O(10) TeV, we investigate the naturalness of the Higgs sector at scales below M using an effective field theory (EFT) approach. We obtain the…
Many of the numbers appearing in the laws of physics, such as the strength of electromagnetism or the masses of elementary particles, must lie in precise ranges for stars, planets, and chemistry to exist. Why the universe has these values…
We argue that the hierarchy problem of the standard model of particle physics can be solved by adding a state-dependent term to the Higgs sector. We present an example of a scalar field with a Higgs-like potential with an additional term…
This note is sketching a simple and natural mathematical construction for explaining the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. It employs nonstandard analysis and is based on Feynman's interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty…
We argue that discreteness at the Planck scale (naturally expected to arise from quantum gravity) might manifest in the form of minute violations of energy-momentum conservation of the matter degrees of freedom when described in terms of…
The properties which give quantum mechanics its unique character - unitarity, complementarity, non-commutativity, uncertainty, nonlocality - derive from the algebraic structure of Hermitian operators acting on the wavefunction in complex…
Philosophers now seem to agree that frequentism is an untenable strategy to explain the meaning of probabilities. Nevertheless, I want to revive frequentism, and I will do so by grounding probabilities on typicality in the same way as the…
Cosmological fine-tuning has traditionally been associated with the narrowness of the intervals in which the parameters of the physical models must be located to make life possible. A more thorough approach focuses on the probability of the…
The Higgs boson discovery stirred interest in next-to-minimal supersymmetric models, due to the apparent fine-tuning required to accommodate it in minimal theories. To assess their naturalness, we compare fine-tuning in a $\mathbb{Z}_3$…
The fundamental laws and constants of our universe seem to be finely tuned for life. The various multiverse hypotheses are popular explanations for the fine tuning. This paper reviews the four main suggestions on inference in the presence…
We study the asymptotic behavior of a singular potential, and discuss the self-consistency condition for the spherical symmetric Klein-Gordon equation. In our view, gravity and the weak force are subsidiary, derived from electricity.…
We propose an interpretation of physics named potentiality realism. This view, which can be applied to classical as well as to quantum physics, regards potentialities (i.e. intrinsic, objective propensities for individual events to obtain)…
The mechanism of production of a large number of universes is considered. It is shown that universes with parameters suitable for creation of life are necessarily produced as a result of quantum fluctuations. Fractal structures are formed…
Quantum mechanics marks a radical departure from the classical understanding of Nature, fostering an inherent randomness which forbids a deterministic description; yet the most fundamental departure arises from something different. As shown…