tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post535430153323753918..comments2024-03-18T20:24:18.935-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: An unimpressive fine-tuning argumentAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-56631703962233680562017-03-02T16:48:16.852-06:002017-03-02T16:48:16.852-06:00As your Genesis example shows, we are drawn to a p...As your Genesis example shows, we are drawn to a plausible theory (“God is trying to tell us something”) rather than to particular numbers. Of course, it may be easier to dream up theories for integers than for other numbers.IanShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00111583711680190175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-10114132695756505242017-03-01T16:39:10.671-06:002017-03-01T16:39:10.671-06:00Surely there is a point where we'd snap to exa...Surely there is a point where we'd snap to exactly 2. Likewise, if the digits started spelling out (in a natural encoding) the Book of Genesis in Hebrew, after a while (ten characters?) we'd come to expect that the next digit will also match Genesis.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-19891423142155296632017-03-01T15:36:09.510-06:002017-03-01T15:36:09.510-06:00I’m not convinced that either we or nature have a ...I’m not convinced that either we or nature have a preference for integer constants. (Check out the story of Dirac, QED and the electron spin g-factor, measured as 2.002319304361. Another example: relative isotopic masses are very nearly, but not exactly, integers) Where there are simple numerical ratios, they usually arise from combining identical units. Think of molar ratios in chemistry, or Miller indices in crystallography.<br /><br />We do (and <i>should</i>, I think) tend to stick with our existing ideas until we have good reasons to change them. (Think Kuhnian paradigm shift, or religious conversion). That’s why we take forces that “physicists don’t talk about” as zero (strictly, non-existent) until we get strong evidence to the contrary. I doubt that this can be fitted into a Bayesian framework.<br /><br />“Classical” statisticians represent this status quo bias by the so-called “null hypothesis”. Bayesians doubt that this makes sense. There are endless debates on this in the statistical literature.IanShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00111583711680190175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-80733885726915631052017-02-28T08:47:52.250-06:002017-02-28T08:47:52.250-06:00*If* there are probabilities between integers, the...*If* there are probabilities between integers, then, yes, higher ones must on average be less probable. But such things are irrelevant in practice, because they say nothing about how things must go for the first 10^10000 integers. You can have on balance a preference for smaller numbers, and yet prefer numbers of the order of magnitude of 10^100 very strongly.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-62503052997532985082017-02-28T08:34:41.910-06:002017-02-28T08:34:41.910-06:00You explained it yourself: the epistemic preferenc...You explained it yourself: the epistemic preference for simpler theories. If you are asking why we should prefer simpler theories, the reason is that reality prefers them. And if you are asking why reality prefers them, it is because it is mathematically necessary for simpler theories, on average, to have a higher probability. (This is related to the demonstrated impossibility of picking an integer with uniform probability over all integers; on average lower integers have to be more probable.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com