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Topic: Karl D. Stephan: Tegmark’s Parallel Universes: A Challenge to Intelligent Design?
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posted 29. April 2003 14:26
Tegmark’s Parallel Universes: A Challenge to Intelligent Design?
by Karl D. Stephan
ABSTRACT—In an article entitled “Parallel Universes” in the May 2003 issue of Scientific American, Max Tegmark presents a clear and comprehensive picture of the parallel-universe idea. What Tegmark describes is actually a set of related concepts which have in common the notion that there are universes beyond the familiar observable one that astronomers can see parts of directly with telescopes and other instruments. Some of these parallel universes are completely unlike our own; others are nearly identical; still others are identical up to a point and then split off into might-have-been worlds of choices not made. Tegmark’s main argument is that, far from being a shadowy, speculative corner of cosmology, the parallel-universe idea has been increasingly confirmed by recent experiments, and we should get used to it because it appears that it will be around for a while.
If true, this is not good news for proponents of intelligent design such as William A. Dembski. In his recent book No Free Lunch, Dembski is at considerable pains to show why the parallel-universe idea is basically a non-starter. He recognizes the threat that parallel universes pose to the concept of specified complexity. Simply expressed, if literally anything can happen, it will, including the most unlikely and designed-looking things such as earth, life, and humanity. If certain forms of the parallel-universe idea are true, then chance, not design, becomes omnipotent.
Cosmology has always bordered upon metaphysics. Questions of ultimate origin and destiny began as metaphysical questions, and only in the last century has science begun seriously to address some of these issues with theories based on empirical evidence. It is still not always easy, therefore, to distinguish cosmology based on empirical evidence from a philosophical position disguised as empirical cosmology. As we shall see, Tegmark’s article deals largely with theories whose main feature, namely, multiple universes, cannot be verified by observation or experiment even in principle. The experimental tests he proposes for these theories really consist in making the philosophical presuppositions required for believing in the theories, and then verifying that the theories agree with already-known data about the present visible universe. So far from being a legitimate way to inflate probabilistic resources to defeat arguments in favor of intelligent design, Tegmark’s parallel universes represent an array of philosophical arguments disguised as science. While the philosophical arguments may have merit on their own, it is illegitimate to claim that they are empirically verified in the conventional scientific sense, as Tegmark sometimes does.
To read the entire paper, please click here
[ 29. April 2003, 14:27: Message edited by: Moderator ]
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 30. April 2003 01:32
Very interesting article and discussion of parallel universes. May I point out that the author Max Tegmark has since then provided a copy of his paper submitted to "Science and Ultimate Reality: From Quantum to Cosmos" at his website.
Max addresses some of the issues related to falsification/testability and metaphysics of his claims
quote:
C. How a multiverse theory can be tested and
falsified
Is a multiverse theory one of metaphysics rather than physics? As emphasized by Karl Popper, the distinction between the two is whether the theory is empirically testable and falsifiable. Containing unobservable entities does clearly not per se make a theory non-testable. For instance, a theory stating that there are 666 parallel universes, all of which are devoid of oxygen makes
the testable prediction that we should observe no oxygen here, and is therefore ruled out by observation.
Max concludes
quote:
The lesson to learn from this example is that multiverse theories can be tested and falsi ed, but only if they predict what the ensemble of parallel universes is and specify a probability distribution (or more generally what mathematicians call a measure) over it. As we will see in Section VB, this measure problem can be quite serious and is still unsolved for some multiverse theories.
He ends with an interesting question
quote:
So should you believe in parallel universes? Let us conclude with a brief discussion of arguments pro and con. First of all, we have seen that this is not a yes/no question rather, the most interesting issue is whether there are 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 levels of multiverses. Figure 1 summarizes evidence for the different levels. Cosmology
observations support Level I by pointing to a
at infinite space with ergodic matter distribution, and Level I plus inflation elegantly eliminates the initial condition problem. Level II is supported by the success of inflation theory in explaining cosmological observations, and it can explain apparent fine-tuning of physical parameters.
Level III is supported by both experimental and
theoretical evidence for unitarity, and explains the apparent quantum randomness that bothered Einstein so much without abandoning causality from the bird perspective.
Level IV explains Wigner's unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics for describing physics and answers the question why these equations, not others?".
Fascinating topic indeed although I do not believe that Max's work at this moment presents the strongest objections to Dembski's arguments.
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 30. April 2003 06:50
Max's arguments represent no threat whatsoever to ID theory, and I think Max would readily admit it. The reason is simple: ID theory is about biological origins, any scientific explanation of which requires an underlying model of causality conspicuously absent from Max's work. Although the MW (Many Worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics purports to "explain" micro-causality by exhaustive (and therefore deterministic) decoherence of the wave function, it ultimately does nothing of the kind.
Because the wave functions of material particles are embedded in that of the universe as a whole, one cannot explain quantum causality in physics without explaining the cosmogonic limit of causality, the ultimate origins problem which centers on the origin of the universe itself. But MW offers no advantages in this regard, for it explains the origin of the multiverse no better than standard cosmology explains that of the physical universe (i.e., not at all). At best, it merely pushes the cosmogony problem back a step and leaves it hanging just like before.
The thing that I find interesting is this. This is Max's second article in Scientific American; his first, about quantum mechanics, was coauthored with a man recognized by many as the world's foremost living physicist, John Wheeler. Wheeler was once the mentor of Hugh Everett, the inventor of MW, and was largely responsible for the somewhat bizarre progress that MW has made in the scientific community. (He was also Richard Feynman's mentor, and was likewise responsible for much of the progress made by the more respectable path integral formalism.) However, Wheeler himself is no longer a supporter of MW. He eventually repudiated MW due to its "excess metaphysical baggage", and has made it very clear in a number of papers that he prefers an approach to cosmogony and cosmology in which the universe is regarded as self-contained. He has even been wont to mention the forbidden G-word ("God"), distantly implying that a self-contained explanation would possess a theological dimension, and therefore a teleological dimension, and therefore an ID-friendly dimension.
Max, however, is evidently blazing his own trail, and it doesn't look like God has a whole lot to do with it. For Max, the upside is that the academic community and its friends in Big Publishing, including SciAm, will approve of his seeming respect for its atheistic sensibilities. The downside is that God won't be around to help Max explain the multiverse. Which just goes to show you, you can't have your cake and eat it too, and you can't explain even a single universe by positing the existence of many.
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Jacob Aliet
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posted 30. April 2003 09:22
[Moderator Edit: Quotes removed per board policy. In the future, please limit your use of quotes and try to integrate them into your responses.]
What is the cosmogonic limit of causality (has it been determined that such a limit exists?) and why does one have to explain it while explaining quantum causality? The interdependence of these two explanations is unclear to me and it would be very helpful if you could explain.
You mean big bang? I think the big bang theory has huge explanatory power and it explains a lot of what we observe today its cmbr prediction has been verified, the redshift of galaxies, Abundance of primordial elements, distribution of quasars, and it resolves Olbers' Paradox.
What cosmogony problem does it leave hanging?
This is an associative ad hominem plus a red herring because its discussing personalities instead of addressing the real issue. This is a controversial issue and making Wheelers change in stance seem significant is an appeal to authority and indeed, tangential.
Does Max posit the existence of many universes to explain a single universe? If not, this is a strawman argument.
[ 30. April 2003, 15:09: Message edited by: Moderator ]
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 30. April 2003 14:31
According to the standard model, the limit of nature is a cosmic singularity, and the limit of causality is whatever generated and sustains this singularity (standard cosmology merely purports to explain how this singularity, once its existence and underlying ontology were already given, blew up into the universe we see, beginning at 10^-43 seconds after the initial big bang). Many Worlds theory purports to account for these things by placing the universe - that is, the thing to be explained - inside a multiverse, and then fails to explain the multiverse. Yet, in order to explain a process that runs as part of an underlying process, the way local physical evolution (causality) runs as a part of global cosmic evolution, one must explain the underlying process right back to the beginning.
Regarding your usage of terms like "associative ad hominem" and "straw man", I'm sorry if you take personal offense. If so, I excuse you from asking me any further questions. People are entitled to their opinions regarding social and commercial institutions; those who insist on identifying personally with the institutions in question have only themselves to blame if generalized critiques offend them.
[ 30. April 2003, 18:15: Message edited by: Christopher M. Langan ]
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Erik
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posted 30. April 2003 18:00
Karl D. Stephan, I think you can make a few improvements to your article:
1. At the end of the day, all science is about is describing and predicting the observations we make. Words like "cause", "mechanism" and "explanation", when used in science, just refer to descriptions of (some part of) the universe in terms of stuff that we consider familiar. From a scientific point of view, all that matters is whether an infinite space-time/multiverse/MWI enables us to better describe and predict observations. If you wish that cosmologists would pay less attention to models implying an infinite space-time, you should therefore supply a cosmological model that is better than all models implying an infinite space-time. As long as there are no models that enable significantly better descriptions and predictions, the study of infinite space-time models is a legitimate scientific endeavor. Whether the other Hubble volumes can be directly observed by us is not very important. For instance, particle physics describes the universe as if every cubic meter of it consisted of an enormous number of particles. None of these particles can be directly observed; instead, the descriptions of the universe in terms of such particles implies that some trajectories in bubble chambers, etc. will be more probable than others and the test of particle physics models is such observations. This situation in particle physics is not qualitatively different from the situation with models that implies that the universe is much bigger than the part we can observe directly. Although about 50% of Tegmark's (and comparable) stuff is metaphysics, there is also about 50% science in there. By not making the considerations outlined above, you have chosen an uncharitable interpretation of Tegmark's article.
2. It appears that you have misunderstood how predictions and tests are supposed to be generated from Tegmark's multiverse/many worlds speculations. The scientific content is that we should analyze observations as if the universe we inhabit was a random variable drawn from an ensemble of possible universes according to a particular probability measure (specified by the multiverse/many worlds hypothesis in question). It could certainly be objected that no non-speculative and mathematically well-defined probability measure has been specified, but that's not among any of your stated objections. Given a particular ensemble of possible universes and a mathematically well-defined probability measure, it is possible to make predictions (just take the probability measure and condition on the observed data and all known facts). An example of how this might work has been given by Russel K. Standish, who "derived" certain features of quantum mechanics from a postulated ensemble of possible universes. There is also a metaphysical part of the arguments you criticize--the part that says that the universe we inhabit is drawn from an ensemble of possible universes--but you have not given fair attention to the scientific part in your paper.
Addressing these points would improve your article.
Erik
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 01. May 2003 12:20
A comment for Karl:
You suggest that Max's claims are not good news for ID proponents but I think you may want to distinguish between ID, ID proponents and ID inference.
It may have some implications for the ID inference but need not affect ID and ID proponents.
Nevertheless, Max's work is quite fascinating and the possibility of parallel universes is quite appealing to me as a physicist. Certainly Max's suggestion that the "theory of everything" is merely the ultimate ensemble theory makes for fascinating reading. Max gives some compelling arguments to support his ideas and presents supporting evidence for his claims as well as provides ways to falsify his ideas.
His writings are clear and easy to understand and seem to be quite accessible to both the layman as well as the expert scientist. Not surprisingly that we find his work in many varieties of publications.
Ian Stewart in Theories of everything: my thoughts does raise an interesting thought:
quote:
The category 2 religion would presumably center around a "design argument". You know the sort of thing: "A god must have designed things so that those equations have the beautiful mutual intersection in one tiny island that they do." But what does this mean? How can a god "design" such an eventuality? If such an eventuality is true, it is a (very complicated) theorem of pure mathematics. Its logical status is the same as the theorem that the first 20 decimal digits of pi are 3.1415926535897932384. It is, ultimately, a tautology, albeit one not obvious to the intuition (at least, to human intuition, with its short "run-time"). That is, it's simply not open to design!
Nevertheless an infinite regress of worlds is quite an interesting way of solving the question of the ultimate origin. As with fractals, there is no real origin.
Is there still place for an ultimate Intelligent Designer (God)? I believe so, God has no beginning either and no end and would seem to map quite well to the idea of parallel universes. So while Tegmark's comments seem to provide no necessary rebuttal to ID it may provide some hurdles to the ID inference which after all is based on being able to identify reliable Intelligent Design.
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Robert C. Koons
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posted 01. May 2003 12:56
Karl,
An excellent piece. I learned a great deal.
One small suggestion, and a question.
1. I think we should avoid identifying "science" with "theories well-supported by the evidence", and "philosophy" with "unsupported speculation". First, this not the way most working philosophers think of philosophy. When someone is engaged in unbridled speculation, why not just say so? Using "philosophy" as essentially a perjorative term is unwise.
2. A question: I'm trying to understand how the Big Bang model is consistent with infinite space. I thought that the BB model said that space itself begins as a dimensionless singularity about 14 billion years ago. I can understand how a finite space could, by rolling the tape backwards, converge upon such a singularity, but how could this happen to an infinite space? No matter how fast space shrinks (again, running the tape backward), an infinite volume will never converge upon a volume of zero.
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Jacob Aliet
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posted 02. May 2003 10:05
I think K. Stephan conflates ' "theories well-supported by the evidence", and "philosophy" with "unsupported speculation" ' predictions and derivations - which is misleading. What stephan calls "philosophy" is what I would call an interpretation or an extrapolation. It would be a philosophy if Max based his subject on axioms but instead he bases it on empirical data and extrapolates from that. I see Maxes' paper as a rehashing of Everetts MWI and the "levels" don't really add anything new. It does pose a challenge to ID because it implies that "nature" can do and create ANYTHING - however complex we think that thing is. The need for an intelligent designer to explain organisms that posess specified complexity and irredicible complexity is eliminated.
OTOH, evolution explains how organisms might have come about while QM addresses physical (as opposed to biological) systems and the multiverse is a cosmological theory - far removed from ID - which, like evolution, focuses heavily on biological systems. The link seems forced.
What that means is that multiverse could prove a challenge to ID depending on the size of "branching" that one focuses on from the universal wavefunction - one can focus on the emergence of organisms or focus on the emergence of universes, cosmic systems and planets. But the scales are so different that it appears incongruent to mix the two.
I would say that QM itself is a challenge to ID (when you factor it in RM). Because the possibilities (from the collapse of the wavefunction) are almost infinite.
ID assumes (arbitrarily) that natures' creativity is limited to creating non-ID systems. Any theory that "empowers" nature to the level that its creative powers are unlimited, challenges ID.
I find MWI to be a logical consequence of QM whether it explains the multiverse or not is another matter altogether. What would constitute an "explanation" of the multiverse?
I would be interested in finding out from CML why he believes something "sustains" the cosmic singularity and what he thinks would be the consequence of that lack of sustenance to the cosmic singularity.
I think evolution (abiogenesis as it were - since CML is concerned about "origins") can be explained using fairly simple laws of chemistry and biology without invoking any multiverse. To discount the ability to explain evolution on the basis of the perceived failure to "explain" the multiverse does not seem valid. The two processes are in different "cosmoses"/ levels and different laws and forces influence the outcomes of processes in the two "levels".
[ 02. May 2003, 10:19: Message edited by: Jacob Aliet ]
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 02. May 2003 11:13
quote:
At the end of the day, all science is about is describing and predicting the observations we make. Words like "cause", "mechanism" and "explanation", when used in science, just refer to descriptions of (some part of) the universe in terms of stuff that we consider familiar. From a scientific point of view, all that matters is whether an infinite space-time/multiverse/MWI enables us to better describe and predict observations.
"What science is about" is in the present context a matter of controversy, but it goes a little farther than merely describing and predicting observations. Or rather, there is more to describing and predicting observations than meets the casual eye. Technically, we might state this as follows: perceptual reality is not perceptually connected. Instead, it is connected to itself by virtue of its placement in the richer network of cognitive reality, in which reside such concepts as causality, mechanism and explanation.
In theoretically (cognitively) connecting perceptual reality in an explanatory causal network, one can't always progress by short obvious steps; sometimes one must plunge into an ocean of non-testability in order to come up with a superior testable description on the far shore (think of this kind of insight as analogous to irreducible complexity, but often followed by a simplificative "refolding stage"). In other words, it is not always easy to distinguish (empirically fruitful) science from nonscience as science progresses; one must rely on logic and mathematics in the "blind spots" between islands of perceptibility.
Logic is clarificative. Consider the words "description" and "prediction". They denote a model-theoretic isomorphism between a linguistic construct (the description or prediction) and its "objective" content (a set of observations to be described or predicted, where observation is understood to have an unavoidable subjective component). Ideally, this description displays maximum compression; it describes present and future data as compactly as possible while sacrificing nothing in depth or scope.
But the real point is that science consists not just of the description or theory, but the theory-observation correspondence...in logical terms, the model. Strictly speaking, one can't even take the existence of an objective, perceptually independent universe for granted, although we often do so on faith; our perceptions are all that we can directly know of that which we perceive. Further insight regarding the content of our perceptions requires some blend of inference, reportage and faith, and thus comes at second hand relative to the observations themselves.
The central object of science is thus a correspondence (similarity mapping, isomorphism) between cognitive-linguistic structures and the observations to which they refer, and by extension to the putatively material contents of these observations. Because this mapping must simultaneously accommodate both of the entities it relates, science is at once cognitive and perceptual in essence. So as far as science is concerned, the medium of reality is a blend of cognition and perception, or by extension, of mind and matter, the abstract and the concrete, the mental and the material. It flows smoothly between them rather than switching suddenly from one to the other across a gap; any such discontinuity would interdict the mapping at all levels, rendering science impossible even in principle.
In an ensemble theory, the universe studied by science is explained as one member of an ensemble of universes existing in a higher space. There is a sense in which the original MW theory is not an ensemble theory: all histories are assumed to exist within one and the same spacetime manifold. That is, Hugh Everett stopped short of postulating the kind of weird and wacky hyperspace now being held forth by MW-happy ensemble theorists. Why? There are technical reasons, but perhaps the main reason is that Everett, like his mentor John Wheeler, felt that explanations applying to the real world should reside within the real world itself. That way, they could be considered real, and therefore valid.
Metaphysical ensemble theories like Max's apply a certain transformation that cannot be scientifically justified: they transform an explanatory or descriptive regress into a topological regress. Syntactic explanatory structures are converted into actual spaces of (potentially) infinite extent and giving way to an infinite diverging sequence of ever-higher spaces. Unfortunately, these spaces are not measurable or even metrizable within perceptual reality, and are therefore not scientific in the empirical sense. As cognitive-linguistic extrapolations from perceptual reality, they are recognizable as "scientific" only where reality is acknowledged as cognitive and linguistic, and where science is allowed to use purely rational methods (i.e. logic and mathematics) to study them. But what does this kind of science look like? How should cognitive-linguistic explanatory extrapolations be handled?
As it turns out, the model designed to handle such extrapolations accommodates ensemble theories without the unscientific transformation in question. In this model, they become syntactic potentials existing internally rather than externally to reality. The model in question, the CTMU (Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe), models reality as an SCSPL (Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language). According to the structure of this model, any useful description or prediction that can be extracted from an ensemble theory can be developed within reality itself. As I've already pointed out, this is more consistent with the intentions of Wheeler and even of Everett than ordinary ensemble theory. And better still, it is tautological in a particular (model-theoretic) sense designed to embrace the empirical sciences.
The model in question was described in PCID a few months ago. Whereas Max puts a particular counterteleological spin on MW - his basic idea is that the universe is what it is because it is a kind of "ensemble average" of mathematically consistent possibilities, which is to some extent what it is in the CTMU as well - the CTMU recognizes this averaging process as teleological in nature and makes it responsive to the Telic Principle, a self-contained generalization of the Anthropic Principle(s). The CTMU has been around as long or longer than Tegmarkian ensemble theory, and while it addresses virtually all of the same problems, it is 100% ID-consistent. For what it's worth, one can derive from it an enhanced version of quantum mechanics (more than Standish has apparently derived from a partial but related set of assumptions).
Regarding Pim's comments, Max only gives possible means to falsify his theory relative to a given set of assumptions which need not hold. The same is true of Ian Stewart's comment regarding what is or is not open to design. The CTMU, within which ensemble theory can (and must) be packed, is expressly “fractal” to the extent that self-similarity is a basic design feature. It follows that infinite divergence is not necessary for self-similarity. And since God can map to MW only as a unity (by a one-to-many mapping associated with the multiverse), Max presents no real obstacle to "identifying reliable Intelligent Design".
Jacob writes that he would be “interested in finding out from CML why he believes something sustains the cosmic singularity and what he thinks would be the consequence of that lack of sustenance to the cosmic singularity”. That which exists needs a medium of existence, and if it is singular, then it cannot provide itself with a medium (since doing so requires a distinction between medium and content which is precluded by singularity). Therefore, if the cosmic origin were not sustained by an existential medium, the universe would not exist...unless, that is, it somehow manages to sustain its own existence. But this leads directly to the CTMU (and not to ensemble theory).
As for why I’m "concerned about origins"...well, evolution is about origins. The Origin of Species. The origin of the cosmos, of matter, and of the laws of physics. The origins of events, AKA “causality”. Biological evolution is sustained by the underlying process of physical evolution, which is sustained in turn by cosmic evolution. So I think that we all need to be concerned about origins, and this includes the origin of any “multiverse” posited to explain why this universe exists as we find it.
Don't get me wrong - I like some of Max's insights. But it can be shown in minute logical detail why Max's infinitely-regressing model fails to qualify as a metaphysical framework. Although there are certain seldom-recognized logical demands on the title “metaphysical framework”, Max is not even attempting to meet them. On the other hand, ensemble theory implicitly claims to be more than merely physical, and it exhibits serious deficiencies with respect to this claim.
[ 02. May 2003, 11:48: Message edited by: Christopher M. Langan ]
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Jacob Aliet
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posted 03. May 2003 05:52
I find the way you use "perceptual reality" and "reality" confusing. In your CTMU paper, you also use "the real universe" - is there reality that is not perceptual and is there an unreal universe? Or is this just an excercise in tautology in ths spirit of CTMU?
You say perceptual reality is not perceptually connected but is connected to itself (telic recursion, I bet ![[Smile]](smile.gif) ). What is the meaning of "perceptually connected" in this case? Isn't perception real? (ie the infocognitive part of a dualistic reality under holism)
Science does not always have to entail the theory-observation correspendence when there are "aspects" that cannot be observed - for example the postinflation bubbles that Max talks about:
quote:
Those bubbles are more than infinitely far away from the earth, in the sense that you would never get there even if you travelled at the speed of light forever. The reason is that the space between our bubble and its neighbours is expanding faster than you could travel through it.
A prediction, by definition, is not directly observable and a scientific theory is falsifiable when it makes predictions. MWI is derived from QM based on the correspondence principle (Bohr's, among other things) so its very valid to posit parallel universes IMHO.
As far as Max moving from syntactic to topological is concerned, science is advancing very rapidly and I believe the misfit you see arises because you embrace science as it were in its formative stages - where empiricism was the rage: I think this started changing when general relativity was "developed" and QM (Heisenbergs Uncertainty) came to the fore.
I am a bit confused when Max says that level II parallel universe is not really a separate universe because it interacts with ours. Anyone here grasps that - bearing decoherence in mind? Worlds cannot interact with each other (per Everett) and I am surprised parallel universes can. I am reading on anyway and hope to gain further insights.
That which exists needs a medium of existence in our universe - with its three dimensions. I dont think that postulate holds for all possible universes. Remember, in the singularity, the laws of science do not hold.
To claim to have a theory that can go beyond that (the singularity), is, well...new.
[ 03. May 2003, 07:23: Message edited by: Jacob Aliet ]
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Moderator
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posted 03. May 2003 08:48
Please keep this thread on topic by discussing the content of Dr. Stephan's paper.
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 04. May 2003 04:38
“The level II parallel universe is not really a separate universe because it interacts with ours” means that in order to explain cosmic inflation, some cosmologists posit the existence of an underlying scalar energy field associated with an all-inclusive background space in which “bubble universes” like ours are supposed to inflate. The dependency of cosmic inflation on this background field contradicts any supposition of two-way independence.
In the present context, reality can be considered synonymous with “nature”, including abstract but non-imaginary features of nature, while perceptual reality is that part of reality directly accessible to perception. (Anyone who finds my usages of these terms ambiguous was already in trouble, because other authors seldom define them at all.) Perceptual reality is connected to itself by (e.g.) geometry and causality, which – as Hume, Kant et al have already pointed out – are not tangible physical quantities. Neither, for that matter, are space and time.
Science always entails theory-observation correspondence up to cognitive-perceptual consistency. Beyond this point, science need not entail such a correspondence at every step, since the logicomathematical criteria for truth are more general and fundamental than empirical criteria and in this sense have priority. We know this because empirical truths must be logicomathematically consistent at every step, whereas logicomathematical truths need not be empirically instantiated at every step. Science must sometimes follow inobvious logicomathematical routes to get from one level of “empirical explanation” to another.
You say that it is "very valid to posit parallel universes" even when they can’t be detected in the real universe that we actually observe. If so, then their validity is not empirical but logicomathematical in the above sense, and only if they turn out to be consistent according to the laws of logic and mathematics. This is a matter of supposition regarding the individual elements of Tegmarkian ensemble theory, the simplistic overall structure of which expressly lacks mathematical closure and cannot be regarded as consistent in a comprehensive sense. A higher level of reasoning indicates that there is more going on in the multiverse, logically and mathematically speaking, than ensemble theories can accommodate, particularly as regards the existence and dynamics of self-aware structures.
By the way, if there exists a singularity in which no laws of science hold, then it isn’t properly a subject for scientific investigation; it’s merely a terminal extrapolation of science. And regarding the "newness" of Max's claims, a number of cosmologists have gone beyond the standard cosmic singularity concept, including Stephen Hawking (and for that matter, me). So if such a claim is new, Max is a newcomer among the innovators. As I’ve said, the entirety of ensemble theory exists implicitly in the CTMU (along with a considerable amount of high-level structure that ensemble theory lacks). Since the CTMU is ID-consistent, ensemble theory is not a threat to ID.
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 04. May 2003 13:22
Langan: Max is a newcomer among the innovators. As I’ve said, the entirety of ensemble theory exists implicitly in the CTMU (along with a considerable amount of high-level structure that ensemble theory lacks). Since the CTMU is ID-consistent, ensemble theory is not a threat to ID.
Max may be a 'newcomer' but his ideas and the ideas of others in the area of multiple universes seems to have taken off quite succesfully to replace the Copenhagen interpretation. And while the CTMU is claimed to contain all this, I have yet to see the CTMU give testable hypotheses, provide for hypotheses which seem to be so far supported by various observations.
As far as being ID consistent, that of course depends on one's definition of ID. ID when used to describe or propose the existence of a 'God' of course never can be at odds with any theory. The question now remains if a TOE is at odds with the ID inference proposed by Dembski. If CTMU contains Tegmark's ideas then it is hard to argue that CTMU is ID friendly in this aspect.
While the CTMU may be rumored to contain Tegmark's ideas and as I understand many other yet to be formulated ideas, I think that the real power of Tegmark's ideas lie in the fact that he has made the ideas accessible to laymen and scientists alike, that he has provided with supporting evidence as well as ways to in principle at least falsify his ideas. Which may explain why his ideas can be found in so many popular and scientific journals.
The question of Tegmark's ideas being a threat or challenge to ID seems ill-posed since I would argue that no scientific idea can in principle be a challenge to ID but it can be a challenge to hypotheses of ID or methods to infer ID as proposed by Dembski.
And if, as Chris claims, the CMTU implicitly contains Tegmark's ideas then CMTU is as much a 'threat' to ID as Tegmark's ideas. But a theory which seems to 'implicitly' include all this and more but explicitly seems to fail to propose such scientific hypotheses may in the end be of little interest to science. But this thread is not about predictions made by the CTMU but predictions made by Tegmark in various publications and its impact on ID, if any.
Btw I do not believe that Tegmark proposes a singularity in which no laws of science hold. But Tegmark does raise a good question
quote:
Since the above prescription was found to be so similar to the conventional one, we must address the following question: can the 1a TOE be distinguished from the others in practice, or is this entire discussion merely a useless metaphysical digression?
A good example may be the Feynman Unworldliness equation
"All of the laws of physics can be contained in one equation. That equation is:"
U=0
"U is a physical quantity which we will call "unworldliness". Here is how you calculate the unworldliness. You take all of the known physical laws and write them in a special form. For example, suppose you take the law of mechanics, F = m.a , and rewrite it as F - m.a = 0. Then you call (F - m.a) -- which should, of course, be zero -- the "mismatch," of mechanics. Next, you take the square of this mismatch and call it U1, which can then be called the "unworldliness of mechanical effects"."
..."So the "beautifully simple" law in Eq. (25.32) is equivalent to the whole series of equations that you originally wrote down. It is therefore absolutely obvious that a simple notation that just hides the complexity in the definitions of symbols is not real simplicity"
Here
[ 04. May 2003, 14:19: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 04. May 2003 14:59
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While the CTMU may be rumored to contain Tegmark's ideas and as I understand many other yet to be formulated ideas, I think that the real power of Tegmark's ideas lie in the fact that he has made the ideas accessible to laymen and scientists alike, that he has provided with supporting evidence as well as ways to in principle at least falsify his ideas. Which may explain why his ideas can be found in so many popular and scientific journals.
Actually, Pim, many CTMU ideas have been pretty exactly formulated. I’m not saying my presentation has been flawless – I’m even now in the process of improving it – but it’s considerably better than you seem to allow. The problem, I think, has to do less with formulation than with conceptual difficulty. As I’ve already observed, Tegmarkian ensemble theory is extremely simplistic; one has a potentially infinite topological regress of spaces containing all possible (mathematically consistent) subspaces. Rather than simply say “big deal” and point out that this deceptive simplicity, along with Max’s stint at the Institute for Advanced Study and his well-known connection with J.A. Wheeler, may have even more to do with the popularity of his material than its alleged scientific validity, I’ll leave it at that. After all, Max may not yet have had the opportunity to defend his ideas against the implications of my own.
You say that "the question of Tegmark's ideas being a threat or challenge to ID seems ill-posed since I would argue that no scientific idea can in principle be a challenge to ID but it can be a challenge to hypotheses of ID or methods to infer ID as proposed by Dembski", and go on to opine that if the CMTU implicitly contains Tegmark's ideas, "then it is as much a 'threat' to ID as Tegmark's ideas." In my view, this is very much mistaken. Superficially, Max’s work seems to justify the attribution of any hypothetical instance of SCI to a deterministic averaging process over an exhaustive ensemble, and at the logical level, the SCI concept is a pretty straightforward consequence of ID. Trying to divorce the basic specified complexity concept from ID ultimately has the effect of making ID scientifically irrelevant. However, if you allow for the possibility that ID is scientifically valid as you may or may not understand it, then one would need a whole new approach to the truth concept to support the notion of a true but irrelevant hypothesis regarding origins.
You’ve made it clear that you like the frontier-town atmosphere created by the idea of parallel universes running amok in hyperspace. OK, I can respect that. But when carried to its ultimate conclusion, this concept leads unavoidably to the CTMU. Why? Because the multiverse is a logical unity, and its scientific investigation requires a model-theoretic approach centered on a distributed logical syntax. There really isn’t any escape; any rejection of this premise immediately robs the scientific enterprise of all validity with respect to the multiverse hypothesis, and does so in such a way that no mere prediction can redeem it (predictions require logically consistent supporting models). I’m doing what I can to try to put CTMU ideas out there in what I consider to be a simple and direct way - Max Tegmark gets immeasurably more support regarding his ideas than I do regarding mine - and would merely submit that those who find them opaque or trivial more carefully consider whether or not they themselves may play some small part in any supposed failure to communicate.
Saying that “a theory which seems to 'implicitly' include all this and more but explicitly seems to fail to propose such scientific hypotheses may in the end be of little interest to science” is a bit shaky, since one can say precisely the same of the logic and mathematics on which science critically depends. Moreover, as I’ve already pointed out, my idea of science is a little less restrictive than the conventional view, which seems to be based on a rather tightly constrained version of model theory in which one side of what should be a symmetric correspondence – i.e., the observable, material side as opposed to the logical and conceptual side - is (in violation of logic) given vastly more weight than the other. And by the way, nobody said that Tegmark proposes a singularity in which no laws of science hold (although he doesn't seem to argue against it). That remark was addressed to the statements of the person to whom I was responding.
Here's a little hint as to what's going on here. It's from page 44 of the CTMU paper published in PCID:
quote:
SCSPL incorporates the concepts of syntactic stratification and syntactic distribution. For example, because the laws of mathematics everywhere apply with respect to the laws of physics, the former distribute over the latter in the syntactic sense. Thus, where the laws of mathematics and physics are denoted by S1=LMS and S2 respectively, S1 distributes over S2, i.e. forms a syntactic covering for S2. Essentially, this means that the laws of mathematics are everywhere a required syntactic component of the language of physics.
Tegmark's "level 4 multiverse" is just S1, the logicomathematical component of human cognitive-perceptual syntax. S2 merely consists of our own laws of physics, including the anthropic "fine-tuning" of universal constants. Max's thesis thus comes down to the idea that various S2 analogues can be formulated in S1, an idea already implicit in the fact that S1 distributes over S2 as a more general component of TOE (SCSPL) syntax, and his terminology simply replaces S1 with "the (level 4) multiverse".
I need merely point out that whereas this is where Max's model terminates, the CTMU goes on to develop the idea in such a way as to deal with the problem of origins. That is, where Max's model ends, the CTMU proceeds to the comprehensive level of teleology and the logical foundations of ID.
Anyway, to direct the focus back toward the topic at hand, I’ll say it again – I agree that some of Max’s ideas are intriguing. But they do indeed fit into the CTMU framework in an obvious way, and the CTMU is ID-consistent. So, then, is the ultimate logical extension of Max’s ideas.
[ 04. May 2003, 15:02: Message edited by: Christopher M. Langan ]
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