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Let's assume as per the anthropic principle, for the mere sake of argument alone, that the physical constants of the universe are indeed biased towards life and that any significant change would eradicate the possibility of any form of conscious life. For the sake of argument as well, let's please ignore discussion on whether this is philosophically relevant or merely tautology.
What I do want to zero in on is the idea that a change "by any small amount" would invalidate possible life. If indeed only a small change would do this, I could see this as significant, but isn't the idea of "small" here arbitrary and, itself, anthropic?
An example to demonstrate using imaginary constants. Let's say:
Constant A has a value of 10^-30. Assume if we were to change it by even 10^-40, this would eliminate the possibility of conscious life of any kind. Indeed, we might consider this a "small" change (by human or relative terms), but what about a change by 10^-41? 10^-42? And so on to 10^-(infinity)? Isn't it more useful then to define the range by which a constant could be changed and still maintain conscious life? And why could there not then be an infinite number of variations (of increasingly small changes) to that constant which still support life? It would seem to follow then that there are an infinite number of possible combinations without conscious life, but also an infinite number of combinations having it.
All in all, it doesn't seem like we can say there exists a "narrow range" for life to form (regardless of how "small" a variance might effect this) and that this is a big oversight in such arguments. Am I missing some way to limit the variance possible to any such constant that's important?
What I do want to zero in on is the idea that a change "by any small amount" would invalidate possible life. If indeed only a small change would do this, I could see this as significant, but isn't the idea of "small" here arbitrary and, itself, anthropic?
An example to demonstrate using imaginary constants. Let's say:
Constant A has a value of 10^-30. Assume if we were to change it by even 10^-40, this would eliminate the possibility of conscious life of any kind. Indeed, we might consider this a "small" change (by human or relative terms), but what about a change by 10^-41? 10^-42? And so on to 10^-(infinity)? Isn't it more useful then to define the range by which a constant could be changed and still maintain conscious life? And why could there not then be an infinite number of variations (of increasingly small changes) to that constant which still support life? It would seem to follow then that there are an infinite number of possible combinations without conscious life, but also an infinite number of combinations having it.
All in all, it doesn't seem like we can say there exists a "narrow range" for life to form (regardless of how "small" a variance might effect this) and that this is a big oversight in such arguments. Am I missing some way to limit the variance possible to any such constant that's important?
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