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Bayesian considerations on the multiverse explanation of cosmic fine-tuning | V. Palonen
; | Date: |
27 Feb 2008 | Abstract: | The fundamental laws and constants of our universe seem to be finely tuned
for life. Alongside design, the various multiverse hypotheses have been popular
explanations for the fine tuning. This paper focuses on the multiverse
explanations and reviews the four main suggestions on how inference should be
done in the presence of possible multiple universes and observer selection
effects. Previously unnoticed conditional dependencies of the propositions
involved, results from Bayesian belief networks, and basic identities from
probability theory are used to tease out the proper style of inference. In the
case of cosmic fine-tuning, information about the observation is not
independent of the hypothesis. It follows that the observation should be used
as data when comparing hypotheses. Hence the approaches that use the
observation only as background information are incorrect. It is also shown that
in some cases the self sampling assumption by Bostrom leads to probabilities
greater than one, leaving the approach inconsistent. The "some universe" (SU)
approach is also found wanting and several reasons are given why the "this
universe" (TU) approach seems to be correct. The converse selection effect
-requirement for SU by White is clarified by showing formally that the converse
condition leads to SU and its absence to TU. The overall result is that because
multiverse hypotheses do not predict the fine-tuning of this universe any
better than a single universe hypothesis, the multiverse hypotheses fail as
explanations for cosmic fine-tuning. Conversely, fine-tuning data does not
support the multiverse hypotheses. | Source: | arXiv, 0802.4013 | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites |
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