Related papers: Conflict between anthropic reasoning and observati…
The original formulation of the (weak) anthropic principle was prompted by a question about objective time at a macroscopic level, namely the age of the universe when ``anthropic'' observers such as ourselves would be most likely to emerge.…
Recent developments in cosmology suggest that much of the universe is in a state of explosive, accelerated expansion, called inflation. We live in a "bubble" where inflation has ended, and other bubbles with diverse properties are…
Cosmic inflation is envisioned as the ``most likely'' start for the observed universe. To give substance to this claim, a framework is needed in which inflation can compete with other scenarios and the relative likelihood of all scenarios…
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…
Recent developments in cosmology indicate that every history having a nonzero probability is realized in infinitely many distinct regions of spacetime. Thus, it appears that the universe contains infinitely many civilizations exactly like…
This paper explores the evolution of the so called "anthropic reasoning" in a historical perspective. It takes under scrutiny the appearance of "anthropic" considerations in various stages of modern cosmology, focusing also on some very…
This paper aims to justify the concept of natural intelligence, the type of intelligence wider than human intelligence and its derivative, AI. I will argue that the process of life is a cognitive process and that organisms, from bacteria to…
Increasingly encompassing models have been suggested for our world. Theories range from generally accepted to increasingly speculative to apparently bogus. The progression of theories from ego- to geo- to helio-centric models to universe…
The influence of recent detections of a finite vacuum energy ("cosmological constant") on our formulation of anthropic conjectures, particularly the so-called Final Anthropic Principle is investigated. It is shown that non-zero vacuum…
The definition of thermodynamic entropy is dependent on one's assignment of physical microstates to observed macrostates. As a result, low entropy in the distant past could be equivalently explained by selection of a particular observer. In…
Ambitious civilizations that expand for resources at an intergalactic scale could be observable from a cosmological distance, but how likely is one to be visible to us? The question comes down to estimating the appearance rate of such…
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…
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…
The existence of multiple regions of space beyond the observable Universe (within the so-called "multiverse") where the vacuum energy density takes different values, has been postulated as an explanation for the low non-zero value observed…
Are some cosmologists trying to return human beings to the centre of the cosmos? In the view of some critics, the so-called "anthropic principle" is a desperate attempt to salvage a scrap of dignity for our species after a few centuries of…
In the modern quantum mechanics of cosmology observers are physical systems within the universe. They have no preferred role in the formulation of the theory nor in its predictions of third person probabilities of what occurs. However,…
If the human race comes to an end relatively shortly, then we have been born at a fairly typical time in history of humanity. On the other hand, if humanity lasts for much longer and trillions of people eventually exist, then we have been…
How did it all begin? Although this question has undoubtedly lingered for as long as humans have walked the Earth, the answer still eludes us. Yet since my grandparents were born, scientists have been able to refine this question to a…
I consider the puzzles arising from four interrelated problems involving `anthropic' reasoning, and in particular the `Self-Sampling Assumption' (SSA) - that one should reason as if one were randomly chosen from the set of all observers in…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…