OK, perhaps I misunderstood. Just to be sure we cover all angles, here is a more philosophical perspective.
I have been trying to think (and finally found him) of this excellent philosopher, David Campbell, who’s lectures are a must for all who are interested in human history and the “Power of Myth”
Where?
AH! Cool. I’m sure I didn’t communicate clearly, unambiguously as to evoke such.
Yeah the power of myth, of story telling is overwhelming; we’re a rhetorical species at best. Myth explains much of early Christianity, even with goodwill. It doesn’t easily explain the thriving 30s-40s Church that Paul was writing to though. Myth explains an historical Jesus’ beliefs and those of his followers, including the myths added, to his OT myth arrogation, decades later in the gospels.
Might I suggest some reading.
Start with Robert Hazen and the evolution of minerals, and his Deep Carbon Project , then Nick Lane’s “Oxygen” guaranteed to be mind blower for every thinking person - ever wonder why we have the male and female sexes, you can thank oxygen. It’s a wild ride.
The Vital Question is before me as I write. I have no cavil with scientism.
I’ve no idea what that has to do with better understanding how this planet created itself.
Let me count the ways . . . . . . .
I have. It’s by Nick Lane.
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Good one, flew right by me, like that gorilla that wanted to play basketball.
Haven’t read that one yet, Life Ascending and Oxygen and a few of talks.
After that, guess I’d better get it on my list.
Mind if I ask, what did you learn from reading The Vital Question?
Big of you ccv4, big of you. You coulda doubled down!
I’ve not started it yet. But I bet it deals with my absolute conviction that there’s no such thing as fine tuning. That there’s only self tuning, if that. That the polydactylic handful of measured constants are what they have to be mathematically, logically, energetically, ergonomically. And that that should be the default regardless until we prove otherwise. Which we never will.
PS But there is no need to discredit the multiverse as only made up to explain the measured constants randomly. The multiverse is axiomatic and neither needs nor can have any evidence and the default of self tuning applies to the first scintillas of being.
I’ll give you that. It’s a great example of contriving stories that have more to do with intellectual entertainment, than seriously understanding anything of substance.
Of course our universe is “fine tuned”!
Or we wouldn’t be here to observe it !
End of Discussion.
Instead it was the gateway to endless lectures, articles and books all adding up to the same nothing.
An ideal example of our propensity to get stuck within our own mindscapes for fun and profit.
You got me on the title, unfortunately I’m known for my blindspots, fortunately I know how to do review and research and I am familiar with the outline since I’ve heard a few of Lane’s talks, that were post publication.
I think you will be surprised. What if it’s got nothing to do with any of that.
What if it’s about energy and the Krebs Cycle and the origin of life?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Good stuff here, can’t resist adding another one.
Hold on! This does not logically follow.
I’ll agree that the universe and especially the earth have the necessary conditions and ingredients that make the emergence of life possible. But fine tuned?
Are you saying that all the extinction events that killed 95% of all life that ever existed was a result of a fine tuned universe?
IMO, it is life that is fine tuned to the universe and in our case, to conditions on earth, which are by no means fine tuned for life. The remarkable fact is that life, given the slightest chance, seems able to appear in the most inhospitable places and conditions imaginable.
{Part 2 of a prohibited posting}
Hmmm.
I don’t see where the “universe” at large has the necessary conditions/ingredients for life.
We haven’t found hint of hide, nor hair, of life out there in the universe. In fact, I’ve gotten the impression that every bit of information we’ve gathered supports the notion that the universe is very hostile to life’s development - a few amino acids not withstanding.
I believe it reflects natural history much better to acknowledge that the universe provided the building blocks and very occasionally creates special neighborhoods, with very special local conditions (our galactic neighborhood, and the Milky Way, and our Solar System, and our most peculiar Earth/Moon system for examine) that have the preconditions for life to appear. But, only after certain fine tuning occurs.
Are you sure about that? Because, it sounds like you are mighty close to confusing the universe for Earth when you make that statement.
{Part one B of a “prohibited” posting}
Isn’t that fine tuning at work in a constantly evolving, that is changing Earth?
When condition are just right, life hums along without much change, it’s when Earth changes and life is under attack that new species start appearing, these new species are “retuned” to adapt to the new conditions (tuning range). Or?
Or how organics become part of subduction and acted as flux plus impacting the composition of the remelted mass that was pushed up to the surface again.
{a short digression to do battle with our Puter Gremlins}
*So there you 'puter stalkier, you virtually bully. *
*Now where is this prohibited word. *
No where!
My point exactly.
{Part one AA of a “prohibited” posting}
I think we risk getting lost in a game of semantics.
What makes that sentence different from a short-hand term like “find tuning”?
For details: https://jan.ucc.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/timeline/24_hours.html
Seriously?
https: // flowing data . com / wp-content/ uploads/2012/10/Time_Clock-620x587. gif
Well that
Robert Hazen seems to think so. He believes that the earth is an average planet with only a few necessary features like water, rocks, air, heat, cold and a dynamic environment and “time”. Apparently, all that is needed are those fundamental natural resources.
Louis Alamandola (NASA) has found biochemicals in deep space dust clouds, absolute requirements necessary for life, but apparently not in the right environment for complex life to emerge, because that may require “surface area” for chemical reactions.
But it is entirely possible that some form of dynamic biochemistry occurs even in deep space . That is why Hitchins observes that when we say we are made of “stardust” we are saying we are made of “nuclear waste products”. That is creating stuff via extreme and chaotic violence. I would not call that fine-tuning per se.
If you want to call a super-nova a fine-tuning event, perhaps you can, but it would not be correct, IMO.
The four molecules of life are proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and nucleic acids . Each of the four groups is vital for every single organism on Earth. Without any of these four molecules, a cell and organism would not be able to live.Aug 31, 2020
Molecules of Life | Basic Biology
As to fine tuning. You don’t see any difference between a deep ocean smoker and a volcanic surface sulphur lake?
Extremophiles are adapted to extreme environments, that are deadly to other less finely tuned organisms. There is only one organism that appears to be adaptable to just about any environment and is found all over the earth from the poles to the equator, and that is the little tardigrade also known as “water bear”.
But you see no difference between an iceworm;
Part of the excitement in studying the dark-coloured worms, said Hotaling, is that they’re very mysterious. Scientists don’t know much about how they work or much about glacier ecosystems. Hotaling suggested that they may be able to live on the freezing glaciers by ramping up their metabolisms as the temperature gets colder.
“But we haven’t really proven that,” said Hotaling, smiling. “We don’t really know. There could be an anti-freeze protein circulating in their blood.”
Hotaling added that climate change is causing glaciers to melt and rapidly destroying many of the worms’ habitats.
These ice worms thrive on B.C. glaciers and now we might know why | CBC News
and
Most bacteria and archaea cannot survive in the superheated hydrothermal fluids of the chimneys or “black smokers.” But hydrothermal microorganisms are able to thrive just outside the hottest waters, in the temperature gradients that form between the hot venting fluid and cold seawater.
These microbes are the foundation for life in hydrothermal vent ecosystems. Instead of using light energy to turn carbon dioxide into sugar like plants do, they harvest chemical energy from the minerals and chemical compounds that spew from the vents—a process known as chemosynthesis.
These compounds—such as hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen gas, ferrous iron and ammonia—lack carbon. The microbes release new compounds after chemosynthesis, some of which are toxic, but others can be taken in nutritionally by other organisms.
The Microbes That Keep Hydrothermal Vents Pumping | Smithsonian Ocean
The whole concept of evolution does not depend on a fine-tuned environment for life . It depends on life becoming fine-tuned to the environment via natural selection.
The Universe is not a finely tuned environment. It has an infinite variety of environments and life has emerged or adapted, become fine-tuned, to some of the most inhospitable local conditions you can imagine on earth alone.
It is the chemistry that fine-tunes itself (evolves) into biomolecules (self-organization), which fine-tuned into Archaia, which fine-tuned into Prokaryotes, which fine-tuned into Eukaryotes , which fine-tuned into humans, one of the physically most vulnerable organisms on earth. We rely on symbiotic bacteria to keep us alive.! The human biome is an evolved fine-tuned biome, but environmental conditions caused several human branches to go extinct. No fine-tuning there.
Shame on you W., get back to Robert Hazen and all the cool things that happened on Earth.
Hell even that thing slamming into us, and created a whole new moon Earth twin system, (not to mention blowing away Earth’s original atmosphere) all of it added necessary “fine tuning” to the system, without which further evolution into complex creatures would not have unfolded.
Let’s not get hung up on “fine tuning” like it was an other “hallucination” or something. 
What do you mean? They were fine tuned out.
I think you are looking at fine tuning like our old radios, fine tuning that dial to achieve static free reception of your station. I’m not talking about fine tuning as agency, I’m talking about fine tuning as creating the parameters for things to exist, or not.
We happen to exist, so were fine tuned into the system, simply by the fact of us being here.
Oh and right now in front of our witnessing eyes, we are in the process of fine tuning us and an awful lot of other creatures right off this planet, so it’ll have a chance to start the tinkering all over again, restarting somewhere way back, down the scale of potentials Earth possesses.
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We happen to exist, so were fine tuned into the system, simply by the fact of us being here.
Oh and right now in front of our witnessing eyes, we are in the process of fine tuning us and an awful lot of other creatures right off this planet, so it’ll have a chance to start the tinkering all over again, restarting somewhere way back, down the scale of potentials Earth possesses.
No , you are viewing in context of evolution . I agree. In fact I am the one advancing the concept of a mathematically evolving universe.
But the underlying proposition of "fine tuning " is the concept that the odds of the universe evolving as it does is 1 in a trillion quadrillion
Here are some exerpts:
The founder of a Christian ministry for skeptics, Ralph O. Muncaster believes that factors like the sun’s mass and Earth’s distance from it mean our planet was intentionally equipped to support human life.
Excerpted from [*Dismantling Evolution: Building the Case for Intelligent Design]
For this to be possible, the ratio of the electromagnetic force constant to the gravitational force constant must be correct within 1 part in 10^40. An increase or decrease in this ratio by only that factor would make life untenable.
That’s pure BS.
More Evidence for the Anthropic Principle
Once some astrophysicists started discovering the amazing precision of the cosmos, others started seeking additional parameters that might have been preprogrammed into the universe to make an environment suitable for life. Since that time, about 10 to 15 new critical parameters have been discovered each year. A small change in any one of these would make life impossible.
Intelligent design--exploring human evolution as designed by God, an addition to the evolution vs. creationism debate - Beliefnet
Do you see why I am a fan of a logically self-ordering mathematically driven universe. It does away with this Motivated Agency that made the Universe for Man alone.
The hubris of this leaves me breathless.
I stand in awe of the evolutionary processes and the logic of “natural selection”.
But did you miss Hazen’s closing remark that “we are not alone in the Universe”?
I’m sure he did not mean some God.
Sometimes you really surprise me.
“Logic” of “natural selection”
I don’t know how to take that, except that the first thing that flashed into my mind was that big meteorite that slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 whatever million years ago. I guess its logical, if you wanna go through some serious mental gymnastics, but I’ll bet the dinosaurs didn’t think it was all that logical.
No I don’t see the advantage to a “self-ordering mathematically driven universe” - it’s a mathematicians perspective. Mathematics is a wonderful powerful tool, perhaps even a mystical tool, if you want to look at it like that, but a tool is still a tool and not the landscape.
Not sure what the point is with Anthropic Principle jazz, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying the entire argument is silly - because
A) Yes there are a bunch of physical parameters that need to be just so, or this universe and subsequently us, could not have come into existence.
B) It doesn’t matter how many of those parameters can or cannot be found. We wouldn’t be here in any event if the cogs and wheels didn’t fit together just right.
C) Only this particular physical configuration could have produced us, so this is the only one we could have been born out of.
D) All the rest is lip flapping. People trying to make themselves sound important.
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:159, topic:7931”]
I don’t know how to take that, except that the first thing that flashed into my mind was that big meteorite that slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 whatever million years ago. I guess its logical, if you wanna go through some serious mental gymnastics, but I’ll bet the dinosaurs didn’t think it was all that logical.
Let me see if I can formulate it.
First; Logical does not necessarily mean fair or just. By definition it is stochastic in its very nature.
Jan.-March 2019, pp. 67-79, vol. 7
Stochastic computing (SC) uses standard logic to process pseudo-random bit-streams denoting probabilities. It implements arithmetic operations with extremely simple and low-power hardware.
CSDL | IEEE Computer Society
Keyword “simple”.
It is quite obvious that the universe behaves in a determinstic fashion even as the pockets of chaos make certain events probabilistic. This is demonstrated in Chaos Theory that explains the first expression of abstract self-ordering mathematical patterns (equations) in the Plasma state during the inflationary Epoch.
David Bohm called them universal “guiding equations”.
But there is a certain logic attached to Natural Selection, even if the results may take millions of years to come to fruition. The equation of "not the strongest, but best adapted organisms survive to procreate, is a perfect example of universal logic, IMO.
That is what prompts me to generalize that "the universe is not fine tuned to life, it is life that is fine tuned to relatively hospitable pockets in the universe.
The Universe has an infinite range of conditions, from Black holes, to Supernovae, to relatively hospitable planets like earth.
But I remember one profound expression of Hazen based on the reversed equation of the Law of Necessity and Sufficiency, where the presence of “sufficient natural resources make it necessary” that certain deterministic processes occur.
