Related papers: Anthropic principle in cosmology
The ethic of proportional redistribution is a compromise between the extremely compensatory ethic of full redistribution and the needs-blind ethic of laissez-faire. In a basic model of redistribution problems with needs, we characterize…
The basic hypothesis of a post-Copernican Cosmological theory is that {\em all the points} of the Universe have to be essentially equivalent: this hypothesis is required in order to avoid any privileged {\em observer}. This assumption has…
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,…
I argue that various derivations of the Born probability rule within strictly unitary quantum mechanics implicitly use anthropic constraints on the properties of the probabilities, but without proposing an ensemble from which those…
Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the…
In this lecture I make some educated guesses, about the landscape of string theory vacua. Based on the recent work of a number of authors, it seems plausible that the lanscape is unimaginably large and diverse. Whether we like it or not,…
Motivated by recent work of Bousso and Polchinski (BP), we study theories which explain the small value of the cosmological constant using the anthropic principle. We argue that simultaneous solution of the gauge hierarchy problem is a…
We note that there is an exception to the general arguments that no falsifiable predictions can be made, on the basis of of presently available data, by applying the weak anthropic principle (WAP) to the landscape of string theory. If there…
The Principle of Complementarity of Probabilities based on of noncommutative probability is introduced.
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…
It is possible that there may be differences in the fundamental physical parameters from one side of the observed universe to the other. I show that the cosmological constant is likely to be the most sensitive of the physical parameters to…
The anthropic principle is based on the observation that, within narrow bounds, the laws of physics are such as to have allowed the evolution of life. The string theoretic approach to understanding this observation is based on the…
In theories in which different regions of the universe can have different values of the the physical parameters, we would naturally find ourselves in a region which has parameters favorable for life. We explore the range of anthropically…
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…
In extracting predictions from theories that describe a multiverse, we face the difficulty that we must assess probability distributions over possible observations, prescribed not just by an underlying theory, but by a theory together with…
We show that most of cutoff measures of the multiverse violate some of the basic properties of probability theory when applied repeatedly to predict the results of local experiments. Starting from minimal assumptions, such as Markov…
We point out that the long-standing strong CP problem may be resolved by an anthropic argument. The key ideas are: (i) to allow explicit breaking(s) of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry which reduces the strong CP problem to the cosmological…
Recently, a new framework for describing the multiverse has been proposed which is based on the principles of quantum mechanics. The framework allows for well-defined predictions, both regarding global properties of the universe and…
This paper deals with the philosophical issues of the notion of nothingness and pre-inflationary stage of the universe in physical cosmology. We presuppose that, in addition to cosmological limits, there may be both anthropic and…
We present a non-physical interpretation of the Cosmological Constant based on a particular algebraic analysis. This also introduces some novel algebraic structures, such as ``unital norms", ``uncurling metrics", and ``partial wedge…