[Mb-civic] Across the Megaverse,,,

[Ian]

It might interest people to know that, at a conference on the anthropic 
principle, Stephen Hawking, speaking about the Big Bang and all that ensued 
therefrom, stated that: "It would be very difficult to explain why the 
universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who 
intended to create beings like us."

Susskind's acceptance of the "10,500 models" concept (it is NOT a "theory," 
as there is ZERO supporting evidence) bothers me for the same reason that 
many scientific opponents of ID bother me, which is the following.

Scientists, particularly quantum theorists, would have us believe that a 
particle can be in two places at the same time, and that a particle can spin 
both clockwise and counterclockwise simultaneously.  They see nothing 
inherently wrong with this concept, but support it solely with an arcane 
branch of statistical mathematics that itself is not "provable."  Yet these 
same scientists furiously oppose the idea that a "Creator" could possibly 
have had any hand at all in "evolution" (random mutation, natural selection, 
"survival of the fittest"), despite the fact that Darwinian theory does - 
unarguably, even by scientists - have "holes," some significant, that remain 
unexplained.  Thus, they will denigrate and dimiss any belief in a 
"Creator," while at the same time holding to a "scientific" belief that 
defies logic, common sense and anything except arcane mathematical theory.

Similarly, Susskind accepts the "10,500 models" theory simply because it 
eliminates (or at very least diminishes) the anthropic principle - despite 
the fact that there is an equal amount of evidentiary support for both; 
i.e., zero.

As an aside, I happen to be a proponent of the superstring theory.  And 
unlike most, I have actually studied it in depth: not only did I take two 
years of quantum, nuclear and astrophyics with Michio Kaku (among the top 
superstring theorists in the world), but I have read at least five books on 
the subject, some fairly technical.  [As an aside, I have also read Kaku's 
book, "Hyperspace," in which the concept of "multiple universes" (in this 
case, 14) was first proposed in a very serious, "scientific" way.  I highly 
recommend it, as it is quite readable even for "non-scientific" persons.]

Still, despite my support of superstring theory in general, Susskind is 
clearly "using" the "10,500 model" concept in a deliberate - but completely 
unsupported - attempt to dismiss the anthropic principle.  I find this (here 
comes my favorite new phrase again...) intellectually dishonest, since he 
admits that there is precious little or no actual evidence to support the 
"10,500 model" concept, yet he is willing to believe it - i.e., to have 
"faith" in it - largely, if not almost solely, because he is unable to 
accept even the possibility of a "Creator," and thus the anthropic 
principle.

What makes Susskind's blind faith in the "10,500 model" concept any more or 
less "untestable, unverifiable and unfalsifiable" - i.e., any less a matter 
of "faith" - than a belief in a Creator?

Peace.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Burns" <jameshburns at webtv.net>
To: <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 2:25 PM
Subject: [Mb-civic] Across the Megaverse,,,


>
> Some fascinating stuff--and an interesting angle, on intelligent
> design....
>
>
> 'THE COSMIC LANDSCAPE,' BY LEONARD SUSSKIND
> Across the Megaverse
> Review by COREY S. POWELL
> Published: January 15, 2006
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/books/review/15powell.html?8bu&emc=bu
>
> Physicists are not like ordinary people, and string theorists are not
> like ordinary physicists. Even compared with their peers, crafters of
> the arcane model of reality that is string theory think in terms of
> sweeping explanations of nature's design. Leonard Susskind, a founder of
> the theory and one of its leading practitioners, brazenly lays out this
> no-boundaries attitude on the first page of his new book. His research,
> he declares, "touches not only on current paradigm shifts in physics and
> cosmology, but also on the profound cultural questions that are rocking
> our social and political landscape: can science explain the
> extraordinary fact that the universe appears to be uncannily, nay,
> spectacularly, well designed for our own existence?"
>
> What troubles Susskind is an intelligent design argument considerably
> more vexing than the anti-evolution grumblings recently on trial in
> Dover, Pa. Biologists can point to unambiguous evidence that evolution
> truly does happen and that it can account for many otherwise
> inexplicable aspects of how organisms function.
> For those who take a more cosmic perspective, however, the appearance of
> design is not so simply refuted. If gravity were slightly stronger than
> it is, for instance, stars would burn out quickly and collapse into
> black holes; if gravity were a touch weaker, stars would never have
> formed in the first place. The same holds true for pretty much every
> fundamental property of the forces and particles that make up the
> universe. Change any one of them and life would not be possible. To the
> creationist, this cosmic comity is evidence of the glory of God. To the
> scientist, it is an embarrassing reminder of our ignorance about the
> origin of physical law.
>
> Until recently, most physicists took it on faith that as they refined
> their theories and upgraded their experiments they would eventually
> expose a set of underlying rules requiring the universe to be this way
> and this way only. In "A Brief History of Time," Stephen Hawking
> recalled Albert Einstein's question "How much choice did God have in
> constructing the universe?" before replying that, judging from the
> latest ideas in physics, God "had no freedom at all." Like many leading
> physicists at the time, Hawking believed that scientists were closing in
> on nature's essential rules - the ones that even God must obey - and
> that string theory was leading them on a likely path to enlightenment.
>
> Although string theory resists translation into ordinary language, its
> central conceit boils down to this: All the different particles and
> forces in the universe are composed of wriggling strands of energy whose
> properties depend solely on the mode of their vibration.
>
> Understand the properties of those strands, the thinking once went, and
> you will understand why the universe is the way it is. Recent work, most
> notably by Joseph Polchinski of the University of California, Santa
> Barbara, has dashed that hope. The latest version of string theory (now
> rechristened M-theory for reasons that even the founder of M-theory
> cannot explain) does not yield a single model of physics. Rather, it
> yields a gargantuan number of models: about 10500, give or take a few
> trillion.
>
> Not one to despair over lemons, Susskind finds lemonade in that
> insane-sounding result. He proposes that those 10500 possibilities
> represent not a flaw in string theory but a profound insight into the
> nature of reality. Each potential model, he suggests, corresponds to an
> actual place - another universe as real as our own. In the spirit of
> kooky science and good science fiction, he coins new names to go with
> these new possibilities. He calls the enormous range of environments
> governed by all the possible laws of physics the "Landscape." The
> near-infinite collection of pocket universes described by those various
> laws becomes the "megaverse."
>
> Susskind eagerly embraces the megaverse interpretation because it offers
> a way to blow right through the intelligent design challenge. If every
> type of universe exists, there is no need to invoke God (or an unknown
> master theory of physics) to explain why one of them ended up like ours.
> Furthermore, it is inevitable that we would find ourselves in a universe
> well suited to life, since life can arise only in those types of
> universes. This circular-sounding argument - that the universe we
> inhabit is fine-tuned for human biology because otherwise we would not
> be here to see it - is known as the Anthropic Principle and is reviled
> by many cosmologists as a piece of vacuous sophistry. But if ours is
> just one of a near-infinite variety of universes, the Anthropic
> Principle starts to sound more reasonable, akin to saying that we find
> ourselves on Earth rather than on Jupiter because Earth has the mild
> temperatures and liquid water needed for our kind of life.
>
> Although Susskind's title and central motivation
> are drawn from this fascinating debate over design, most of "The Cosmic
> Landscape" is structured not around philosophy but around the
> nuts-and-bolts concepts of modern particle physics. Here Susskind's long
> years as a theorist and lecturer at Stanford University prove a mixed
> blessing. He is a good-humored and enthusiastic tour guide but he
> clearly does not know how baffling he sounds much of the time. He coaxes
> the reader along with rhetorical questions and charmingly corny
> allegories. Still, this isn't much help when it comes to material like
> "Let's suppose that the Calabi Yau manifold has a topology that is rich
> enough to allow 500 distinct doughnut holes through which the fluxes
> wind. The flux through each hole must be an integer, so a string of 500
> integers has to be specified." Um, is this going to be on the exam?
> Susskind's insider perspective also lends an air of smugness to the
> whole affair. He falls prey to the common error of Whig history:
> interpreting past events as if they were inevitable stepping stones to
> the present. He allows remarkably little doubt about string theory
> considering that it has, as yet, not a whit of observational support.
> "As much as I would very much like to balance things by explaining the
> opposing side, I simply can't find that other side," he writes in his
> concluding chapter.
>
> Such braggadocio begs for an anthropic question of its own. Humans have
> been around in more or less their present form for about 150,000 years;
> detailed stories of the origin of the world run as far back as the first
> written languages and surely existed in oral form much earlier still.
> How likely is it that this generation, right now, is the lucky one that
> has discovered the final answer?
>
> I'm not a physicist, but if I were putting money on the table, I
> wouldn't take those odds.
>
> Corey S. Powell is a senior editor at Discover magazine and author of
> "God in the Equation: How Einstein Transformed Religion."
>
> © Copyright 2006 The New York Times
>
>
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