Related papers: Is the Universe roughly-tuned for computing?
When a physicist says that a theory is fine-tuned, they mean that it must make a suspiciously precise assumption in order to explain a certain observation. This is evidence that the theory is deficient or incomplete. One particular case of…
The fine-tuning of the universe for life, the idea that the constants of nature (or ratios between them) must belong to very small intervals in order for life to exist, has been debated by scientists for several decades. Several criticisms…
The apparent fine-tuning of several fundamental parameters that determine the properties of our Universe and make it hospitable to life is sometimes used as an argument for God from design. I review the concept of cosmic fine-tuning and…
If the parameters defining the physics of our universe departed from their present values, the observed rich structure and complexity would not be supported. This article considers whether similar fine-tuning of parameters applies to…
A well-known topic within the philosophy of physics is the problem of fine-tuning: the fact that the universal constants seem to take non-arbitrary values in order for live to thrive in our Universe. In this paper we will talk about this…
Anthropic principles were grown from the problem of fine tuning. Although anthropic principles have been discussed in cosmology for years there is no exact definition for fine tuning. Starting from the supposed similarity in the topologies…
The observable universe is necessarily hospitable for life. There are indications, however, that the laws of physics and cosmological parameters need not take the form and values observed, and if they were slightly different life could not…
Our laws of nature and our cosmos appear to be delicately fine-tuned for life to emerge, in a way that seems hard to attribute to chance. In view of this, some have taken the opportunity to revive the scholastic Argument from Design,…
In 2011, I published a popular-level book, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe is Not Designed for Us. It investigated a common claim found in contemporary religious literature that the parameters of physics and cosmology are so…
Finetuning and Naturalness are extra-empirical theory assessments that reflect our expectation how scientific theories should provide an intuitive understanding about the foundations underlying the observed phenomena. Recently, the absence…
Fine-tuning in physics and cosmology is often used as evidence that a theory is incomplete. For example, the parameters of the standard model of particle physics are "unnaturally" small (in various technical senses), which has driven much…
The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life has received a great deal of attention in recent years, both in the philosophical and scientific literature. The claim is that in the space of possible physical laws, parameters and…
We clarify the confusion, misunderstanding and misconception that the physical finiteness of the universe, if the universe is indeed finite, would rule out all hypercomputation, the kind of computation that exceeds the Turing computability,…
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…
The anthropic principle is an inevitable constraint on the space of possible theories. As such it is central to determining the limits of physics. In particular, we contend that what is ultimately possible in physics is determined by…
When we want to predict the future, we compute it from what we know about the present. Specifically, we take a mathematical representation of observed reality, plug it into some dynamical equations, and then map the time-evolved result back…
In this philosophical paper, we explore computational and biological analogies to address the fine-tuning problem in cosmology. We first clarify what it means for physical constants or initial conditions to be fine-tuned. We review…
Fine-tuning studies whether some physical parameters, or relevant ratios between them, are located within so-called life-permitting intervals of small probability outside of which carbon-based life would not be possible. Recent developments…
Partial descriptions of the Universe are presented in the form of linear equations considered in the free (full, super) Fock space. The universal properties of these equations are discussed. The closure problem caused by computational and…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…