----- Original Message -----
From: "island"
Newsgroups: sci.physics.research
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2003 1:48 AM
Subject: A New Anthropic Principle


Stephen Harris wrote:

There is no _purpose_ involved in what you call fine-tuning or
evolution.

Okay, I tried to keep my fingers quiet, but this has just gotten to be
too much!

A "new" Anthropic principle goes as follows, and please note that the
primary entropic inclination of every object in a big bang induced
expanding universe says that you cannot make an unfounded faith-like
philosophical leap outside of this primary inclination of natu


I've already show this group the physics of the entropic evolutionary
process by which the universe and humans commonly evolve, and yet they
continue as if nothing at all got said, even though I openly challenged
the group to "agree" that this is important... whatever... Whatever is
right!... Whatever happened to the good ole' days when John Baez, Matt,
Oz, Charles and others would be all over this for the neat and plausible
thing that it represents? I don't understand what's happend to this
place?


I don't see that your new version of the anthropic principle has much to do
with the new one presented by Radi Khrapko. Yours seems much like the
theory developed by biologists into self-organization/complexity.

Some people may not have been able to see what you were driving at
so here is a post which explains it a bit more clearly:

Guy Hoelzer of sci.bio.evolution
"I, too, think it is correct to say that there is a purpose to life for
the same reason that it is correct to say that there is a purpose to
the existence of any physical process in the universe. I think that
all of them ultimately serve to dissipate energy or matter across
spatial gradients of change, which is driven by the 2nd law of
thermodynamics (or a similar universal physical law that has yet to be
perfectly articulated). Life certainly does this. The only way that
life could stop doing this would be to cease as a process altogether
(total extinction)." end of quote

Guy also made a statement close to: The purpose of life is to extend or
improve the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics ability to dissipate energy
in a controlled manner. IOW, plantlife evolved because it could soak
up the sun's energy and then release it over an extended period.

Now before you can have a planet with a molten surface which will
cool down so that plantlife can evolve, you need a sun. Our sun could
not have happened early in the life of the universe because we have
carbon which is necessary for life.

There is a process by which helium and hydrogen stars eventually
go supernova and produce carbon which is necessary for our type
of life. It is just as logical to say that this process was directed by,
or given purpose by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics because it
led to evolution and creation of life-supporting stars and planets
which then developed plantlife also to further the domain and
sovereignty of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The argument
is a good deal less than compelling.

island wrote: Whatever is
right!... Whatever happened to the good ole' days when John Baez, Matt,
Oz, Charles and others would be all over this for the neat and plausible
thing that it represents? I don't understand what's happend to this
place?


SH: Your argument is hardly new. There are a lot of valid topics available
that deserve attention which takes time so responses have to be prioritized.
It is not all difficult to perceive your argument as handwaving from the
fringe.

I think there are causal processes and then processes which are concurrent
and caused by a common parent energy/force. It is a logical fallacy to
assign
causality between two observations when instead they are concurrent. Your
argument does not establish the 2nd law of thermodynamics or entropy as
the original cause of the Big Bang theory though they are both consequences
in the observed universe. It isn't known if all the forces were unified at
the
moment of the Big Bang and perhaps gravity is an exception. This idea of a
preferred direction comes up more often in biology, natural selection and
chance.

Regards,
Stephen