Related papers: What's the trouble with anthropic reasoning?
We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an…
Prediction in quantum cosmology requires a specification of the universe's quantum dynamics and its quantum state. We expect only a few general features of the universe to be predicted with probabilities near unity conditioned on the…
The usage of the anthropic principle in modern cosmology is reviewed. It is argued that its recent use to explain the observedvalues of cosmological parameters as most probable values for an ensemble of universes, is not justified. However,…
In the absence of a fundamental theory that precisely predicts values for observable parameters, anthropic reasoning attempts to constrain probability distributions over those parameters in order to facilitate the extraction of testable…
The anthropic principle is one of the possible explanations for the cosmological constant ($\Lambda$) problem. In previous studies, a dark halo mass threshold comparable with our Galaxy must be assumed in galaxy formation to get a…
One way that an anthropic selection mechanism may be manifest in a physical theory involves multiple domains in the universe with different values of the physical parameters. If this mechanism is to be relevant for understanding the small…
Anthropic models can give testable predictions, which can be confirmed or falsified at a specified confidence level. This is illustrated using the successful prediction of the cosmological constant as an example. The history and the nature…
The anthropic explanation for the peculiarly small observed value of the cosmological constant $\Lambda_{\rm obs}$ argues that this value promotes the formation of stars, planets, and ultimately of observers such as ourselves. I show that a…
A brief explanation of the meaning of the anthropic principle - as a prescription for the attribution of a priori probability weighting - is illustrated by various cosmological and local applications, in which the relevant conclusions are…
Anthropic principle can help us to understand many properties of our world. However, for a long time this principle seemed too metaphysical and many scientists were ashamed to use it in their research. I describe here a justification of the…
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…
The anthropic principle has been proposed as an explanation for the observed value of the cosmological constant. Here we revisit this proposal by allowing for variation between universes in the amplitude of the scale-invariant primordial…
The (re)introduction of $\Lambda$ into cosmology has spurred debates that touch on central questions in philosophy of science, as well as the foundations of general relativity and particle physics. We provide a systematic assessment of the…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
Anthropic reasoning often begins with the premise that we should expect to find ourselves typical among all intelligent observers. However, in the infinite universe predicted by inflation, there are some civilizations which have spread…
We show that anthropic selection emerges inevitably in the general framework for prediction in quantum cosmology. There the predictions of anthropic reasoning depend on the prior implied by the universe's quantum state. To illustrate this…
Anthropic arguments in multiverse cosmology and string theory rely on the weak anthropic principle (WAP). We show that the principle, though ultimately a tautology, is nevertheless ambiguous. It can be reformulated in one of two unambiguous…
The place of an anthropic argument in the discrimination between various cosmological models is to be reconsidered following the classic criticisms of Paul C. W. Davies and Frank J. Tipler. Different versions of the anthropic argument…
The causal entropic principle aims to predict the unexpectedly small value of the cosmological constant Lambda using a weighting by entropy increase on causal diamonds. The original work assumed a purely isotropic and homogeneous cosmology.…
In the context of models where the dark energy density $\rD$ is a random variable, anthropic selection effects may explain both the "old" cosmological constant problem and the "time coincidence". We argue that this type of solution to both…