Is Paul Steinhardt's Statement "Rather Pathetic"? Why?

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In summary, Paul Steinhardt, a prominent physicist at Princeton University, has spoken out strongly against the idea of a multiverse and the use of the anthropic principle in explaining the properties of our universe. He believes that our universe is not accidental and that the current failure of string theory to find a unique universe is a sign of our immature understanding or potential error in the theory. Despite objections from others, Steinhardt stands firm in his belief and sees the current enthusiasm for string theory as natural and expected to decrease as the Large Hadron Collider becomes more prominent.
  • #36


bapowell said:
OK. What evidence, taken at face value or otherwise, can you provide for the existence of mutliple universes?
I've already posted it.
 
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  • #37


Garth said:
It is as a scientist that I have a problem. It is not the possibility of these other universes that is the question but their verification, or falsification, by scientific observation and testing.
And I have already posted the very good reasons to believe that other regions of space-time with different low-energy laws of physics are exceedingly likely. Far, far more likely than our universe being unique.
 
  • #38


Chalnoth said:
I've already posted it.
If you are referring to your post about spontaneous symmetry breaking, such a discovery, in itself, is not direct evidence for the existence for a multiverse because of the additional, untestable assumptions that must be made (I pointed these out in response to your post). If you're referring to your comment regarding quantum mechanics, you make no mention of any direct observational evidence for the other branches of the wavefunction.

So, the question persists. What evidence am I being accused of refusing to take at face value?
 
  • #39


bapowell said:
If you are referring to your post about spontaneous symmetry breaking, such a discovery, in itself, is not direct evidence for the existence for a multiverse because of the additional, untestable assumptions that must be made (I pointed these out in response to your post).
I don't see this in your response.

But no, it doesn't require any additional assumptions. Unitary quantum mechanics + spontaneous symmetry breaking is sufficient.

bapowell said:
If you're referring to your comment regarding quantum mechanics, you make no mention of any direct observational evidence for the other branches of the wavefunction.
Except that you have to invoke magic to avoid them. You can invoke magic to avoid anything if you like.
 
  • #40


Chalnoth said:
Except that you have to invoke magic to avoid them. You can invoke magic to avoid anything if you like.
But you can't observe these other branches of the wavefunction. I'm not denying their existence; I'm not trying to avoid them. I'm trying to say that you can't observe them which is absolutely necessary for empiricism.
 
  • #41


Chalnoth I think you made a mistake in post #2, right at the start. It doesn't make it simpler to assume a patchwork of regions with different laws/constants.
Chalnoth said:
Specifically, I object to this statement:

"The anthropic principle makes an enormous number of assumptions"

Except that in reality, it requires more assumptions to assume a unique universe than it does to assume a prolific universe-generation process: you still need a universe-generation process, except now it can only ever occur once. And forcing that universe-generation process to only occur once requires additional and completely unreasonable assumptions.
...

Don't know what you mean by "universe-generation process". Could be a shell concealing a fallacy in your thinking. It is not incumbent on me or anyone else to explain why existence exists. The universe exists, our job is to explain aspects of its behavior in testable ways, to arrive at the next deeper layer of explanation--the next deeper layer of testable natural law.

No one is expected to leap to some conclusion as to the ultimate Answer.

And BTW eternal inflation would not solve that problem either. If it could actually be determined that there really is a patchwork of assorted big bang regions then what "universe-generation process" established the field on which they blossom?

As for the various ideas about how expansion started, some are more complicated and some less. At this point we have no reason to presuppose it happened this way or that. I can't tell whether or not you are committed to the eternal inflation picture, you sometimes seem to be and this would explain why you think it is more complicated to assume a mechanism that prevents other inflations in some imagined elsewhere-land.
 
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  • #42


I assume he is suggesting that it is more likely that the process which caused our universe to exist was not a one off and happens regularly, much as the m-brane theory proposes.

Your comment, marcus, about the process that created the area into which the universes are expanding is very much why I am dubious about cyclic models and m-branes. Taking the process back a 'step' should be done cautiously.
 
  • #43


Chalnoth said:
That's not even necessary, though, as the nature of quantum mechanics guarantees that all of these different symmetry breaking events are realized right here as different branches of the wavefunction.

Does it? Unless a consensus is reached on the physical reality of the wavefunction then what happens when that wavefunction is collapsed is entirely debatable.
 
  • #44


bapowell said:
But you can't observe these other branches of the wavefunction. I'm not denying their existence; I'm not trying to avoid them. I'm trying to say that you can't observe them which is absolutely necessary for empiricism.
Direct observation is not required for anything in science. You can't observe an electron either in the strong sense.
 
  • #45


marcus said:
Chalnoth I think you made a mistake in post #2, right at the start. It doesn't make it simpler to assume a patchwork of regions with different laws/constants.
It is automatically simpler because it requires fewer assumptions. Just taking the standard model, for example, it is simpler for the electroweak symmetry breaking to be spontaneous, and thus occur differently in different patches, than it is for it to be forced to take on the particular value we observe. This situation is only likely to get more extreme as we learn more about high-energy physics.

marcus said:
Don't know what you mean by "universe-generation process". Could be a shell concealing a fallacy in your thinking. It is not incumbent on me or anyone else to explain why existence exists. The universe exists, our job is to explain aspects of its behavior in testable ways, to arrive at the next deeper layer of explanation--the next deeper layer of testable natural law.
If you want to get pedantic, the low-entropy initial conditions of our observable universe demand an explanation. Some sort of process is required to produce those low-entropy initial conditions, and there is no reason whatsoever to think that this process happened only once. And even if it did, quantum mechanics still guarantees that all or at least a great many outcomes occur even if it did only happen once.

marcus said:
And BTW eternal inflation would not solve that problem either. If it could actually be determined that there really is a patchwork of assorted big bang regions then what "universe-generation process" established the field on which they blossom?
I didn't say it did. But there has been some recent work in fixing the infinities by limiting the calculations to one Hubble horizon. No generality is lost due to the nature of unitary quantum mechanics, but the calculations are now finite and do not suffer from the measure problem that plagues eternal inflation.
 
  • #46


salvestrom said:
Does it? Unless a consensus is reached on the physical reality of the wavefunction then what happens when that wavefunction is collapsed is entirely debatable.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for those that would argue that they need to make up extra dynamics that do nothing but reduce the predictive power of quantum mechanics.
 
  • #47


Chalnoth said:
Direct observation is not required for anything in science. You can't observe an electron either in the strong sense.

But testability is. Gotta be able to measure it or an affect you expect it to have on something else you can observe. I think the sciency response is along the lines of: if they do exist they have no causal effect on us and are irrelevant. I think irrelevant is harsh, but if it has no effect on any system, it's not science. It's just cool.
 
  • #48


salvestrom said:
But testability is. Gotta be able to measure it or an affect you expect it to have on something else you can observe. I think the sciency response is along the lines of: if they do exist they have no causal effect on us and are irrelevant. I think irrelevant is harsh, but if it has no effect on any system, it's not science. It's just cool.
Right, and many of the models that lead to the multiverse are testable. Real consequences of a multiverse, by the way, have already been posted in this thread.
 
  • #49


Chalnoth said:
Direct observation is not required for anything in science. You can't observe an electron either in the strong sense.
But I can directly detect it's presence, for example, viz. a track in a cloud chamber.

It looks like you have your own version of how induction is done, which differs significantly from my view. You seem to be saying the following:

There is a theory A that makes predictions B, C, and D. I've collected the appropriate data and verified, to some degree of significance, that B and C are true. I have no data to verify D. But, since it is predicted by the same theory that predicts B and C, and since I have adequate data to support predictions B and C, then D is true. Sort of like "true by association." I'm sorry Chalnoth, but I don't buy it. And I don't think Francis Bacon would either. Or really any empiricist for that matter.

EDIT: That's not to say that such a situation shouldn't compel one to strongly suspect the validity of D. Your allusion to the transitional fossils made earlier is an example. Yes, given the success of evolutionary theory and its sound logical framework, many pieces of which have been verified scientifically, it is especially likely that transitional fossils should exist (and they do, as I think we all know, but sake of argument here.) However, such a strong suspicion does not abdicate the scientist from his responsibility of finding them. Their absence in no way invalides the theory -- an argument I think you suspected I was making. I was not. But they do not become objective reality simply because they really, really should be there.
 
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  • #50


Chalnoth said:
I have no sympathy whatsoever for those that would argue that they need to make up extra dynamics that do nothing but reduce the predictive power of quantum mechanics.
But you apparently have just the right amount of sympathy for those that would argue for a vast and wasteful proliferation of alternate universes. I don't see why you don't simply admit that you are following a sense aesthetic that helps guide which physical theories you deem most relevant to the universe. That's not a criticism -- we all do this. But it's ultimately just a hunch, not something you've verified with data.

This is not a rhetorical question: how does doing away with many-worlds reduce the predictive power of QM? If you can convince me that many-worlds is the way to go, then I will agree to upgrade my agnosticism regarding the existence of a multiverse to an "I strongly suspect..."
 
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  • #51


Thinking on the topic's title: accidental versus...?

I read the article about non-uniformity in the CMB. Anyone know if they've looked at that spiffy knew pink one we've got now?

I also looked up wave-function collapse. The wikpedia article general says that the Copenhagen Interpretaton is the standard one, but contains no direct mention of what happens to the other probabilities. Many worlds is an extension of that and then, further down it mentions Many Minds. There were nearly a dozen, in all. I've been left with the clear impression that the nature of the wavefunction is quite open to debate and is not unambiguous evidence of a multiverse.

http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-theorem-shakes-foundations-1.9392

The above link (gotta love the over-stated title and leading line) has a further link to a preprint of the paper. They are in agreement with challnoth's view as far as I can tell.

I think I'm sort of with Einstien. He considered the wavefunction statistical, but with an as yet undiscovered underlying reality. My own personal view is the same. I view the wavefunction as a desription of something real, but that what it describes isn't quite what we think it to be.
 
  • #52


bapowell said:
But I can directly detect it's presence, for example, viz. a track in a cloud chamber.
No. What you can do is test the predictions of a model of the electron. Many of the models which include a multiverse are testable in the exact same way.

bapowell said:
There is a theory A that makes predictions B, C, and D. I've collected the appropriate data and verified, to some degree of significance, that B and C are true. I have no data to verify D. But, since it is predicted by the same theory that predicts B and C, and since I have adequate data to support predictions B and C, then D is true. Sort of like "true by association." I'm sorry Chalnoth, but I don't buy it. And I don't think Francis Bacon would either. Or really any empiricist for that matter.
This is the normal way that science is done. Every single prediction of a theory cannot possibly be verified. So we test what we can, and the more ways that we can test a theory, the more confident we are in its overall correctness.

With models of the universe that include a multiverse, even if it turns out to be impossible to observe the multiverse component of those models directly, there are most definitely other aspects of those models that can be tested. And even just the standard model plus unitary quantum mechanics makes a multiverse nearly certain.

bapowell said:
EDIT: That's not to say that such a situation shouldn't compel one to strongly suspect the validity of D. Your allusion to the transitional fossils made earlier is an example. Yes, given the success of evolutionary theory and its sound logical framework, many pieces of which have been verified scientifically, it is especially likely that transitional fossils should exist (and they do, as I think we all know, but sake of argument here.) However, such a strong suspicion does not abdicate the scientist from his responsibility of finding them. Their absence in no way invalides the theory -- an argument I think you suspected I was making. I was not. But they do not become objective reality simply because they really, really should be there.
And there are many scientists working on creative ways to test for the impact of various multiverse ideas more directly. I don't hold much hope that this will prove to be fruitful. But it does, at least, avoid the useless work of trying to avoid such multiverse hypotheses as a matter of principle.
 
  • #53


bapowell said:
But you apparently have just the right amount of sympathy for those that would argue for a vast and wasteful proliferation of alternate universes.
Why is it wasteful? What does that even mean?

It's exactly this knee-jerk reaction that I have such a big problem with. No matter which way you slice it, multiverse theories require fewer assumptions. It is easier for a theory to be prolific than not. Demanding that the default hypothesis be proven is ludicrous. The default hypothesis needs to be disproven, not proven.
 
  • #54


Chalnoth said:
This is the normal way that science is done. Every single prediction of a theory cannot possibly be verified. So we test what we can, and the more ways that we can test a theory, the more confident we are in its overall correctness.
But you still haven't said why you've chosen to accept many-worlds over other interpretations, outside of from what I can tell are purely aesthetic reasons. Unless you have some Bayesian prior on your model space that you aren't telling anyone about.

EDIT: This discussion has actually been helpful because I understand now what we disagree about. It's not so much about the implied correctness of untested predictions or axioms. It's about your staunch acceptance of a version of quantum mechanics based solely on its relative simplicity that I'm not quite in agreement with. Occam's razor is an indispensable guide for selecting the most favored model out of a bunch; but it does not exclude those models it doesn't select.
 
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  • #55


bapowell said:
But I can directly detect it's presence, for example, viz. a track in a cloud chamber.

It looks like you have your own version of how induction is done, which differs significantly from my view. You seem to be saying the following:

There is a theory A that makes predictions B, C, and D. I've collected the appropriate data and verified, to some degree of significance, that B and C are true. I have no data to verify D. But, since it is predicted by the same theory that predicts B and C, and since I have adequate data to support predictions B and C, then D is true. Sort of like "true by association." I'm sorry Chalnoth, but I don't buy it. And I don't think Francis Bacon would either. Or really any empiricist for that matter.

EDIT: That's not to say that such a situation shouldn't compel one to strongly suspect the validity of D. Your allusion to the transitional fossils made earlier is an example. Yes, given the success of evolutionary theory and its sound logical framework, many pieces of which have been verified scientifically, it is especially likely that transitional fossils should exist (and they do, as I think we all know, but sake of argument here.) However, such a strong suspicion does not abdicate the scientist from his responsibility of finding them. Their absence in no way invalides the theory -- an argument I think you suspected I was making. I was not. But they do not become objective reality simply because they really, really should be there.


I think your example above goes back to what I was saying, that really there is a grey area between what is science and not science.
So let's suppose theory A predicts B, C and D. As you say B and C have veen verified. Should we accept D as true without verififcation? I think I would agree that we should not accept it to the same extent as we accept B and C. However neither should we classify it as the same level of non science as something silly like creationism.

Take gravity waves for example, although there has been indirect evidence from binary pulsars there has never been a direct detection despite LIGO being operational for something like 10 years (?). Now let's suppose the pulsar observation had not been made, what should we say about gravity waves? Well I think they would be in this grey area, they are precited by GR and Gr si well verified. Not somehting silly like creastionsim, but neither somehting verified such as time dilation.
 
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  • #56


bapowell said:
But you still haven't said why you've chosen to accept many-worlds over other interpretations, outside of from what I can tell are purely aesthetic reasons. Unless you have some Bayesian prior on your model space that you aren't telling anyone about.

EDIT: This discussion has actually been helpful because I understand now what we disagree about. It's not so much about the implied correctness of untested predictions or axioms. It's about your staunch acceptance of a version of quantum mechanics based solely on its relative simplicity that I'm not quite in agreement with. Occam's razor is an indispensable guide for selecting the most favored model out of a bunch; but it does not exclude those models it doesn't select.
1. Many-worlds makes more predictions as to how the universe behaves. Specifically, it makes definite predictions about the nature of collapse. Most other interpretations sweep the nature of collapse under a rug and make no predictions at all about it. Considering that the nature of collapse is becoming more and more important as we try to take advantage of quantum mechanics for computing, this really is an essential feature and can no longer be considered up to personal choice (not that the nature of reality ever was up to personal choice).
2. Many-worlds makes the fewest assumptions. I don't see how there can possibly be any argument about this point.
 
  • #57


skydivephil said:
Take gravity waves for example, although there has been indirect evidence from binary pulsars there has never been a direct detection despite LIGO being operational for something like 10 years (?).
This is kind of off-topic, but I just wanted to point out that the upgrade to advanced LIGO is now under construction, and is expected to be up and running somewhere around 2015. The sensitivity is expected to be great enough that it will be guaranteed to detect gravity waves from a number of known sources, barring some unforseen systematic errors.
 
  • #58


Chalnoth said:
2. Discoveries in high energy physics point to the existence of spontaneous symmetry breaking, which would lead to different regions of space-time realizing different low-energy laws of physics.

Why? I mean, the spontaneous symmetry breaking does not say that there are universes where each vacuum state is realized. Or am I wrong? I just don't see how spontaneous symmetry breaking is related to many universes!
 
  • #59


Chalnoth said:
... No matter which way you slice it, multiverse theories require fewer assumptions. It is easier for a theory to be prolific than not. ...

I think this is mistaken. (BTW it's a claim you already were asserting in post#2)
The way I slice it, the appropriate question to be asking at this point is how did the "big bang" come about.
How did the expansion begin and why does it have the observed characteristics?

Bounce theories of how this happened seem to depend on fewer assumptions. They simply have the U extend back further in time, and be in a contracting mode. No different laws from those operating now.

Here's a current survey that briefly describes various approaches to understanding "big bang". It is an invited review for Modern Physics Letters:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4543
Not all the approaches sketched here are "multiverse" and it seems to me some are simpler (as well as more testable.) So I don't think your claim stands.
 
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  • #60


Chalnoth said:
1. Many-worlds makes more predictions as to how the universe behaves. Specifically, it makes definite predictions about the nature of collapse. Most other interpretations sweep the nature of collapse under a rug and make no predictions at all about it. Considering that the nature of collapse is becoming more and more important as we try to take advantage of quantum mechanics for computing, this really is an essential feature and can no longer be considered up to personal choice (not that the nature of reality ever was up to personal choice).
2. Many-worlds makes the fewest assumptions. I don't see how there can possibly be any argument about this point.
OK. So as I understand it you favor many-worlds due to its parsimony and predictive strength relative to alternatives. This is precisely the way one would go about weighing the relative merits of competing statistical models. But at the end of the day, we are not considering statistical models; we are interpreting the candidate theories as representing objective physical reality. The more complicated, less predictive model may well be correct! Again, these considerations suggest a preference, statistically speaking, for the simpler model. I do not, however, think this is adequate to furnish the kind of certainty and correspondence to objective reality that you are advocating.
 
  • #61


Brian, hope it's OK to interject. I think the main agenda here is to resolve the cosmological singularity and provide either for inflation or for a substitute mechanism.

Renaldi, in the invited review article I mentioned, mentions string cosmology, loop cosmology, Horava, Jacobson's Einstein-aether, and various others. He gives a brief historical account of the earlier attempts which preceded and led up to these approaches---particularly the first two. In one form or another, most of these involve a bounce.

You might want to glance at the relevant section, which is just 2 pages long. It is section 2 "Lines of Research" and begins on page 2. Here's an excerpt.
==Rinaldi review article http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4543 page 3==
There are several other models that offer alternatives to the direct quantization of gravity. Recently, Horava has proposed a power-counting renormalizable theory of gravity, based on an anisotropic scaling at high energy 20. Essentially, the fundamental hypothesis is that time and space do not scale in the same way, according to the scheme t → bzt, xi → bxi, where z is called critical (Lifschitz) exponent and b is an arbitrary constant. By adding higher spatial curvature terms to the standard Einstein-Hilbert action, one can construct a model where, at high energy z ≥ 3, which makes the theory power-counting renormalizable, while at low energy z = 1. Local Lorentz invariance is preserved in the infrared (IR), and it is broken in the UV. The original formulation of this model suffered from un unwanted ghost scalar field, that persisted also in the IR 21,22. To remove this anomalous degree of freedom one needs to add new terms in the action, that are basically formed by combination of a vector field, orthogonal to constant time surfaces, and its derivatives 23. In this form, the Hoˇrava-Lifschitz theory becomes very similar to the “Einstein-aether” theory proposed by Jacobson many years before as a vector-tensor theory of gravity 24. Both theories offer non-singular solution to the cosmological equations 25,26 and the horizon problem is solved without recurring to inflation 27.
==endquote==
 
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  • #62


martinbn said:
Why? I mean, the spontaneous symmetry breaking does not say that there are universes where each vacuum state is realized. Or am I wrong? I just don't see how spontaneous symmetry breaking is related to many universes!
Well, there are two ways to look at this. One is that inflation strongly predicts that this and potentially other symmetry breaking events are only local effects, and that they will occur differently in far-away regions. The second is that whatever physical model you have for our early universe, it is highly unlikely that that physical model is a one-off event.
 
  • #63


marcus said:
I think this is mistaken. (BTW it's a claim you already were asserting in post#2)
The way I slice it, the appropriate question to be asking at this point is how did the "big bang" come about.
How did the expansion begin and why does it have the observed characteristics?

Bounce theories of how this happened seem to depend on fewer assumptions. They simply have the U extend back further in time, and be in a contracting mode. No different laws from those operating now.
Two points. First, I find these theories highly unlikely, due to the apparent reversal of entropy at the bounce. Second, even if this isn't a problem, there's still no reason whatsoever to believe it's a one-off event. You still have to assume it's a one-off event separately from the physical model.

A tangential point that I'd make is that the way high-energy physics is progressing, it is seeming increasingly unlikely that you could ever achieve the conditions for life with a model that only started one region of space-time with one set of physical laws.
 
  • #64


Just to be clear, I am addressing the claim of simplicity or fewer assumptions that you made in post #2. It simply is not true.

It is your opinion that the 4 or 5 quantum cosmology approaches discussed briefly in that invited review article are "highly unlikely". Since it happens they are all bounce type. Your opinion could be right or wrong---this is not relevant.

You cannot rightly say that multiverse scenarios require fewer assumptions than other theories being studied that resolve the cosmo singularity.

I don't think you even know what the possible alternative theories are, so it is ridiculous to claim that multiverse theories need fewer assumptions than all the others.

Logically I think what you need to say is that in your opinion the approaches Renaldi covers in his review article (string cosmology, loop, Horava, Einstein-aether...) are "highly unlikely" and if these approaches are excluded then multiverse requires fewer assumptions than whatever theories you know of that resolve the initial singularity.
 
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  • #65


I think there is multiple meanings of the word multiverse being used here.
The problem I have with Steinahrdt's statement is the basis of his argument, in that he beleives the universe was not accidental. Other than that statement. I agree with the rest, in so much as to say that it's equally possible that galaxies are the largest structures or that there is possibly more than one isolated 'universe' existing at the same time.

I agree with Chalnoth in that the universe is not a singular event. More time and a bounce scenario can explain the astronomical probabilities for the conditions of life (as we know it!) just as well as more space.
 
  • #66


marcus said:
Just to be clear, I am addressing the claim of simplicity or fewer assumptions that you made in post #2. It simply is not true.
Except it is true. There is no possible way to have a unique universe without making that an extra, specific assumption in the theory. This is simply because any physical model of the universe which doesn't explicitly mention other regions of space-time also won't explicitly exclude them. It makes the theory more complex to exclude them. Always.
 
  • #67


Chalnoth said:
It makes the theory more complex to exclude them. Always.
But theories are never ruled out on account of their complexity. This is where I disagree with your reasoning. You are essentially performing a Bayesian model selection on your space of competing theories. They all satisfy the data equally well, however, some have additional structure than others that make them either less predictive, more complex, or both. The Bayesian evidence disfavors these models, but it does not exclude them! This is an incorrect interpretation of the statistical method.
 
  • #68


Chalnoth said:
Except it is true. There is no possible way to have a unique universe without making that an extra, specific assumption in the theory. This is simply because any physical model of the universe which doesn't explicitly mention other regions of space-time also won't explicitly exclude them. It makes the theory more complex to exclude them. Always.

Chalnoth you are not making sense. A bounce cosmology theory does not have any statement in it which says some other bounce in some completely separate realm doesn't exist. It is just a theory whereby the universe that we know and observe, with its physical laws, contracted and rebounded (according to a quantum law of gravity to be tested) resulting in what we now see.

A scientific theory is supposed to explain observations and make testable predictions, this is what we apply the Occam criterion of simplicity to, and fit to data.
A bounce cosmology has no place for some grandiose philosophical speculation about some other completely disconnected realm. Makes no assertion either way.

this is how to get a really simple resolution of the initial singularity.
 
  • #69


Chalnoth said:
Well, there are two ways to look at this. One is that inflation strongly predicts that this and potentially other symmetry breaking events are only local effects, and that they will occur differently in far-away regions. The second is that whatever physical model you have for our early universe, it is highly unlikely that that physical model is a one-off event.

But is not an answer to my question, where in the symmetry breaking is the need for many universes!
 
  • #70


martinbn said:
But is not an answer to my question, where in the symmetry breaking is the need for many universes!

Is it perhaps derived from not treating any given probability as special, so it is considered that they all playout.
 
<h2>1. What did Paul Steinhardt say that was considered "rather pathetic"?</h2><p>Paul Steinhardt made a statement criticizing the theory of cosmic inflation, which suggests that the universe underwent a rapid expansion in its early stages.</p><h2>2. Why was Paul Steinhardt's statement controversial?</h2><p>Paul Steinhardt's statement was controversial because it went against the widely accepted theory of cosmic inflation, which has been supported by numerous observations and experiments.</p><h2>3. What evidence does Paul Steinhardt provide to support his statement?</h2><p>Paul Steinhardt argues that there is no concrete evidence to support the theory of cosmic inflation and that it is based on assumptions and mathematical models rather than observational data.</p><h2>4. How have other scientists responded to Paul Steinhardt's statement?</h2><p>Other scientists have responded with criticism, arguing that there is significant evidence to support the theory of cosmic inflation and that it has been a successful framework for understanding the early universe.</p><h2>5. What impact could Paul Steinhardt's statement have on the field of cosmology?</h2><p>Paul Steinhardt's statement has sparked a debate within the field of cosmology and could potentially lead to further research and exploration of alternative theories to explain the origins of the universe.</p>

1. What did Paul Steinhardt say that was considered "rather pathetic"?

Paul Steinhardt made a statement criticizing the theory of cosmic inflation, which suggests that the universe underwent a rapid expansion in its early stages.

2. Why was Paul Steinhardt's statement controversial?

Paul Steinhardt's statement was controversial because it went against the widely accepted theory of cosmic inflation, which has been supported by numerous observations and experiments.

3. What evidence does Paul Steinhardt provide to support his statement?

Paul Steinhardt argues that there is no concrete evidence to support the theory of cosmic inflation and that it is based on assumptions and mathematical models rather than observational data.

4. How have other scientists responded to Paul Steinhardt's statement?

Other scientists have responded with criticism, arguing that there is significant evidence to support the theory of cosmic inflation and that it has been a successful framework for understanding the early universe.

5. What impact could Paul Steinhardt's statement have on the field of cosmology?

Paul Steinhardt's statement has sparked a debate within the field of cosmology and could potentially lead to further research and exploration of alternative theories to explain the origins of the universe.

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