In section 4 Tegmark spends a lot of ink rehashing anthropic
arguments. This part of the paper seems out of place; I think
a few good references would have served as well. Ostensibly,
his reasons for doing this are to apply his three "criteria"
for determining what sorts of structures we are likely to find
ourselves in. But this seems seriously backwards to me: he
should qualify that the entire section then falls into the
category of a "retrodiction".
I think that anthropic arguments are interesting because it
has always seems to me that they imply multiple universes. That
is, unless one is arguing that the universe was created
especially for us, how else could we find this amazing
coincidence of circumstances which allows us to be here? How
else but that a variety of universes really do exist?
--
Chris Maloney
http://www.chrismaloney.com
"Knowledge is good"
-- Emil Faber
Received on Sat Jun 05 1999 - 05:27:17 PDT