Chalnoth said:
There is absolutely no comparison. The designer of ID is, by definition, more complex than that which it purports to explain.
according to the Prophet Dawkins, i s'pose. "by definition" here is quite dependent on who is defining.
It is more complex because it is fundamentally impossible to derive any specific observation from the nature of the designer: each specific observation must be independently assumed. The designer of ID is, therefore, to be considered highly unlikely by Occam's Razor.
right outa Chapter 3.
By contrast, models which include a multiverse are inherently simpler than models which do not, because it requires additional assumptions to restrict the universe to one realization,
just because an equation that describes reality has many solutions, does not mean that every solution exists in reality. it only means (
if such equation really
does describe reality) that the solution we observe in reality must be one of those many solutions. in a simple sense, it's like the 4 modes of the solution of a 4th-order diff eq. the solution can be any of the 4 (or any linear combination, if the diff eq is homogeneous) but, say it's waves on a string, it doesn't mean that if there are 3 other strings.
in the same way that it requires more assumptions to fully-describe the set [1,2,3,4,5] than it does to describe the set of all integers.
concepts (like whole numbers) are not physical things. maybe there's an infinite amount of physical stuff out there, or maybe it's finite (and much bigger than you and me). we don't know. still doesn't tell us diddley about whether or not there are other universes (that we can't measure).
Even more stark, the proponents of ID often rely upon designers which are in principle undetectably by any potential experiment. Sometimes they come up with designers that make testable claims, but those are trivially proven false through very simple observations.
By contrast, many multiverse models are very much testable. Sometimes those tests are extremely difficult to perform, but they are in principle possible.
so in principle, it's possible to test the state of something outside of the observable universe? even just the existence of the thing with the state?
This is rooted in the fact that such models are by necessity mathematical in nature, and that nature allows one to produce very specific predictions of the model. Whether or not those predictions can be accessed by current observation shouldn't bias us for or against any particular theory.
The simple fact of the matter is that by excluding a priori models which you don't like, based upon nothing but your dislike for those models, you are biasing your potential answers for the nature of the universe. And no, there is absolutely no valid reason to exclude multiverse ideas a priori.
i am not excluding models. i don't really like or dislike any of these different cosmological models. some components of some models
are testable and potentially falsifiable. yea!
still doesn't clue us in on a falsifiable reality of universes outside our own.
Noth, i sort of like multiverse theories. i think, for as little as we know and can know, that the existence of other universes is as plausible as the lack of such existence. but i don't need that imagined reality to be true (it
might be true, for all we know) to make some sense of the reality that i
do observe myself in.
but if you're going to use selection bias to write off some otherwise difficult to explain anthropic coincidences regarding some critical universal constants, there isn't a causal logic to get you there without
first the assumption of many "experiments" (universes), most of which fail (to be observed by anyone) but we (by definition) can only observe an "experiment" that succeeds. the "substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." the nasty 5-letter F-word.
, since I don't believe there are any yet. I just wanted to share some of my frustration. I now think I understand the term multiverse mania. 
