Related papers: Is the Strong Anthropic Principle Too Weak?
A simple, heuristic formula with parallels to the Drake Equation is introduced to help focus discussion on open questions for the origins of life in a planetary context. This approach indicates a number of areas where quantitative progress…
A general sketch of how the problem of space dimensionality depends on Anthropic arguments is presented. A new argument in favor of a stable scenario for space dimensionality for a time scale longer than that required for the existence of…
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 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.…
This paper presents the proportional evolutionary time hypothesis, which posits that the mean time required for the evolution of complex life is a function of stellar mass. The "biological available window" is defined as the region of a…
We propose an alternative anthropic probability for calculating the probabilities in eternal inflation. This anthropic probability follows naturally from the weak anthropic principle, and does not suffer the freak observer or the typicality…
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 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 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…
Why did the emergence of our species require a timescale similar to the entire habitable period of our planet? Our late appearance has previously been interpreted by Carter (2008) as evidence that observers typically require a very long…
We suggest to combine the Anthropic Principle with the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Theory. Realizing the multiplicity of worlds it provides an opportunity of explanation of some important events which are assumed to be extremely…
It is sometimes assumed that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. Here we critically examine the assumptions inherent in this if-life-evolved-rapidly-life-must-be-common argument. We use the…
The existence of life is one of the most fundamental problems of astrophysics. The intriguing existence of progressively complex and apparently improbable living beings should be a general tendency of life in the Universe. We are looking…
In the {\em Many Worlds Interpretation} of quantum mechanics, the range of possible worlds (or histories) provides variation, and the Anthropic Principle is a selective principle analogous to natural selection. When looked on in this way,…
We argue that in Universes where future and past differ only by the entropy content a psychological arrow of time pointing in the direction of entropy increase can arise from natural selection in biological evolution. We show that this…
Life forms exhibit such a degree of exquisite organization that it seems impossible that they could have developed out of a process of trial and error, as intimated by the theory of Darwinian evolution. In this general public paper I…
Probably not, because there are lots of manifestly unanthropic ways of producing entropy. We demonstrate that the Causal Entropic Principle (CEP), as a replacement for the anthropic principle to explain the properties of the observed…
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 observation of life on Earth is generally accepted to be uninformative concerning the probability of life on other Earth-like planets, a belief first formalized by Brandon Carter and based on the selection effect of our existence. In a…
We begin with the premise that the law of entropy could prove to be fundamental for the evolution of intelligent life and the advent of technological civilization. Building on recent theoretical results, we combine a modern approach to…