Related papers: Anthropic Reasoning and Quantum Cosmology
Selection effects in cosmology are often invoked to "explain" why some of the fundamental constant of Nature, and in particular the cosmological constant, take on the value they do in our Universe. We briefly review this probabilistic…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 is a critical tool to understand probabilities, especially in a large universe or multiverse. According to anthropic reasoning, we should consider ourselves typical among members of a reference class that must include…
Traditional cognitive science rests on a foundation of classical logic and probability theory. This foundation has been seriously challenged by several findings in experimental psychology on human decision making. Meanwhile, the formalism…
The probabilistic predictions of quantum theory are conventionally obtained from a special probabilistic axiom. But that is unnecessary because all the practical consequences of such predictions follow from the remaining, non-probabilistic,…
We demonstrate that behavioral probabilities of human decision makers share many common features with quantum probabilities. This does not imply that humans are some quantum objects, but just shows that the mathematics of quantum theory is…
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…
Recently the multitude of vacua in string theory have led some authors to advocate the anthropic principle as a possible resolution for the contrived set of parameters that seem to govern our universe. I suggest that string theories should…
A quantum probability model is introduced and used to explain human probability judgment errors including the conjunction, disjunction, inverse, and conditional fallacies, as well as unpacking effects and partitioning effects. Quantum…
Experiments in cognitive science and decision theory show that the ways in which people combine concepts and make decisions cannot be described by classical logic and probability theory. This has serious implications for applied disciplines…
What is the quantum state of the universe? That is the central question of quantum cosmology. This essay describes the place of that quantum state in a final theory governing the regularities exhibited universally by all physical systems in…
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,…
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 problem of interpreting quantum theory on a large (e.g. cosmological) scale has been commonly conceived as a search for objective reality in a framework that is fundamentally probabilistic. The Everett programme attempts to evade the…
The assumption that a complete description of an early state of the universe does not privilege any position or direction in space leads to a unified account of probability in cosmology, macroscopic physics, and quantum mechanics. Such a…