RE: Amoeba croaks -

From: <hal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 07:58:33 -0800

Higgo, James, <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>, writes:
> I explain why "the world presents the appearance of a time-evolving one"
> using the weak anthropic principle: we can onle 'exist' in a world which
> presents the appearance of a time-evolving one. I deny categorically that
> anything is more objective than anything else. And I use Ockham's razor to
> slash anyone who disagrees with me.

This seems to suffer from the same problem as using the Anthropic
Principle (AP) to explain why the universe is so large.

According to the AP, the universe is as large as it is because we can only
exist in a world which is large enough to evolve us. But actually, the
universe is apparently much larger than it needs to be for us to evolve.
It could be many orders of magnitude smaller and we would not have found
it out until the invention of astronomy.

Similarly, the universe could have many backwards-time regions and
it would not have affected our evolution. Yet as we look deeper and
deeper into the universe, we don't see backwards-time or no-time regions.
Every time we extend our view and continue to see a universe whose laws of
physics look the same as our own, an AP based argument has no explanation.

There must be something more fundamental going on.

Hal
Received on Thu Jan 14 1999 - 08:07:58 PST