My answers to Borcis
From : Borcis
Sent : Wednesday, December 24, 2003 7:17 PM
To : Radi Khrapko
Subject : A New Anthropic Principle
Radi Khrapko wrote:
An answer to the Fermi's question, `Where are they?', is presented.
Strictly speaking, it is answering a different question, eg "why
don't we observe them", implying the original one is rhetorical. I
don't agree that "Where are they?" is rhetorical. It's really not like
there wasn't a lot of places where we could imagine "them" to be.

My answer is: "They are nowhere"

The answer is: we are alone because our Universe is bad for a
civilization. The combination of physical constants does not need to
be more fine tuned than is necessary to permit one civilization and,
since extreme fine tuning of the constants is a very unlikely event,
it is most likely that our Universe is just good enough to permit
development of only one civilization.
Curiously enough, the assumption that we are alone would seem
to allow viewing as "significant fine-tuning" what we would otherwise
have to dismiss as probably irrelevant. Like the size of Moon, or its
apparent diameter being the same as that of the Sun, say, or a lot of
similar coincidences that characterize our particular environment. I
believe it follows from your assumption that the more direct
environment of the unique civilization that develops, must be regarded
as very special.

Sorry, I don’t understand your thought. Please, say it in other
words.

The alternative anthropic principle can be formulated as
follows: `It is most likely to observe a universe in which civilized
life is an extremely rare phenomenon.'
Well, the last extremity of rarity is total absence... isn't it painful that the truth of your principle is discontinuous as frequency - 0 ?

No, it isn't painful: the probability of my occurrence in the universe
is zero. However I observe myself

How do you get at the notion that fine-tuning the universe
for an unique civilization should be less "extreme" than fine-tuning it
for many civilizations ? It seems you imply an appeal to an
interestingly pathological version of the principle of parsimony.

Sorry, what is the principle of parsimony?
I think that among anthropic universes there are universes that are
more or less favorable for civilizations, and, if the probability of
an anthropic universes is very small against the background of all
universes, it is natural to expect that the probability of a universe
especially favorable for civilizations will be very small against the
background of universes that admit only one civilization and, in
particular, that are rather adverse marginal universes adjoining
non-anthropic universes.

Regards, Boris Borcic
L'anthropie met un terme aux dynamiques

Radi Khrapko