Fine-tuning and the claim that “unlikely things happen all the time”

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 1, 2017

Fine tuning}

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Often used to dismiss the masses of evidence for fine-tuning of our universe, as opposed to chance. From Tim Barnett at Salvo:

This response may have some rhetorical force, but it makes a fundamental mistake. To expose the error, let me give you another illustration. Imagine your best friend has been murdered and the lead suspect is on trial. In fact, DNA evidence puts the suspect at the scene with the murder weapon in hand. As a result, the defense attorney turns to the jury and says, “The DNA evidence makes it highly unlikely that my client is innocent. But unlikely things happen all the time. For example, for you to exist, your mom and dad had to meet, fall in love, and have sex at just the right time. . . .

Would any jury accept this response? I think we would have to say no.

But why wouldn’t they accept it? It is because there is a better explanation; namely, that the suspect really is the killer. More.

Note: Lots of good stuff to read at Salvo Online #41

See also: In search of a road to reality

Comments

Marfin @7: You also make a good point. If there is no independent evidence that X can even happen in the first place, then the appeal to "Well who knows? Yes, it is highly unlikely, but theoretically maybe it could have happened!" rings quite hollow. Unfortunately, the entire materialistic creation story is an appeal to one long string of miracles after another -- improbabilities stacked on top of one another. And all without any evidence that even a single one of the numerous required events actually could occur in practice.Eric Anderson_{June 2, 2017
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jdk and Bob O'H (and others): Ah, yes, the failed "unlikely things happen all the time" argument against design. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I addressed this very issue in the below linked podcast a couple of years ago, if anyone is interested. Including the birthday problem Bob O'H mentions. www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2015/06/eric-anderson-probability-design/ ----- Bottom line, the "improbable things happen all the time" line of argumentation, of which there are several permutations, is a terrible argument against design.Eric Anderson_{June 2, 2017
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Phinehas @ 17: Excellent point.Truth Will Set You Free_{June 2, 2017
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forexhr @ 16: Fascinating. How do a/mats typically respond to that argument?Truth Will Set You Free_{June 2, 2017
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kmidpuddle:
If I shuffle a deck of cards and pull four aces off the top, the probability that it happened is one.
OK, but the issue isn't whether it happened, but whether it happened by chance. What if you didn't shuffle the deck? What if you didn't see it shuffled? What if it gets shuffled again and the first four cards are four aces again? And again? And again? Now, what are the odds that it keeps happening by chance?Phinehas_{June 2, 2017
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There's an even better argument than fine-tuning, and that is - the ratio between adaptive and non-adaptive mutations. Let us suppose that ethanol is the new environment to which an organism must adapt in order to survive. Given the evolutionary narrative, a trait with the ability to metabolize ethanol will arise in the same way as any new trait arises - via duplication and modification of pre-existing genetic material. So, an organism will acquire the ability to metabolize ethanol via nucleotide rearrangements of some duplicated gene. But there is a fundamental problem with this narrative. Mutations have equal potential to rearrange this duplicated gene into astronomical number of either, bio-functional arrangements that have nothing to do with ethanol metabolism or junk arrangements that are completely useless in any environment. In other words, most of the 10^810 possible nucleotide arrangements of an average eukaryotic gene, would be completely useless in the context of ethanol metabolism. Given the fact that there have been only 10^43 mutations in the history of life(1) it follows that there hasn't been enough mutational resources to adapt to any particular environment(like ethanol). The possible quantity of non-adaptive genetic changes(changes that are completely useless in a particular environment) is simply too large for an adaptation to happen. In other words, the ratio between adaptive and non-adaptive mutations for any given environment is so small that an organism(or population) simply cannot adapt to it. (1) http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/25/953.fullforexhr_{June 2, 2017
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Thanks for the explanation at 8, JDH. My remark wasn't in respect to any argument, so I'll bow out now.jdk_{June 2, 2017
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A/mats basically believe that anything can happen given enough time. It is a false but strongly held assumption that leads to wild-eyed speculations...like Darwinian evolution and multiverse theory.Truth Will Set You Free_{June 2, 2017
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SO, very nice. KFkairosfocus_{June 2, 2017
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BO'H and KMP: I would advise you to remember the level of many commenters at UD. Do not presume JDH has little background for what he is saying in a very simplified way; starting with things like statistical thermodynamics. And BTW, HN5 is on point too, at 30 in a room is it odds are what 2/3, and at 366, unity. I have been member of that matched birthday pair several times in fairly small groups. KF PS: Maybe this from Walker and Davies may help you think again:
In physics, particularly in statistical mechanics, we base many of our calculations on the assumption of metric transitivity, which asserts that a system’s trajectory will eventually [--> given "enough time and search resources"] explore the entirety of its state space – thus everything that is phys-ically possible will eventually happen. It should then be trivially true that one could choose an arbitrary “final state” (e.g., a living organism) and “explain” it by evolving the system backwards in time choosing an appropriate state at some ’start’ time t_0 (fine-tuning the initial state). In the case of a chaotic system the initial state must be specified to arbitrarily high precision. But this account amounts to no more than saying that the world is as it is because it was as it was, and our current narrative therefore scarcely constitutes an explanation in the true scientific sense. We are left in a bit of a conundrum with respect to the problem of specifying the initial conditions necessary to explain our world. A key point is that if we require specialness in our initial state (such that we observe the current state of the world and not any other state) metric transitivity cannot hold true, as it blurs any dependency on initial conditions – that is, it makes little sense for us to single out any particular state as special by calling it the ’initial’ state. If we instead relax the assumption of metric transitivity (which seems more realistic for many real world physical systems – including life), then our phase space will consist of isolated pocket regions and it is not necessarily possible to get to any other physically possible state (see e.g. Fig. 1 for a cellular automata example).
[--> or, there may not be "enough" time and/or resources for the relevant exploration, i.e. we see the 500 - 1,000 bit complexity threshold at work vs 10^57 - 10^80 atoms with fast rxn rates at about 10^-13 to 10^-15 s leading to inability to explore more than a vanishingly small fraction on the gamut of Sol system or observed cosmos . . . the only actually, credibly observed cosmos]
Thus the initial state must be tuned to be in the region of phase space in which we find ourselves [--> notice, fine tuning], and there are regions of the configuration space our physical universe would be excluded from accessing, even if those states may be equally consistent and permissible under the microscopic laws of physics (starting from a different initial state). Thus according to the standard picture, we require special initial conditions to explain the complexity of the world, but also have a sense that we should not be on a particularly special trajectory to get here (or anywhere else) as it would be a sign of fine–tuning of the initial conditions. [ --> notice, the "loading"] Stated most simply, a potential problem with the way we currently formulate physics is that you can’t necessarily get everywhere from anywhere (see Walker [31] for discussion). ["The “Hard Problem” of Life," June 23, 2016, a discussion by Sara Imari Walker and Paul C.W. Davies at Arxiv.]
PPS: Note, John Leslie too:
"One striking thing about the fine tuning is that a force strength or a particle mass often appears to require accurate tuning for several reasons at once. Look at electromagnetism. Electromagnetism seems to require tuning for there to be any clear-cut distinction between matter and radiation; for stars to burn neither too fast nor too slowly for life’s requirements; for protons to be stable; for complex chemistry to be possible; for chemical changes not to be extremely sluggish; and for carbon synthesis inside stars (carbon being quite probably crucial to life). Universes all obeying the same fundamental laws could still differ in the strengths of their physical forces, as was explained earlier, and random variations in electromagnetism from universe to universe might then ensure that it took on any particular strength sooner or later. Yet how could they possibly account for the fact that the same one strength satisfied many potentially conflicting requirements, each of them a requirement for impressively accurate tuning?" [Our Place in the Cosmos, The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1998 (courtesy Wayback Machine) Emphases added.] AND: ". . . the need for such explanations does not depend on any estimate of how many universes would be observer-permitting, out of the entire field of possible universes. Claiming that our universe is ‘fine tuned for observers’, we base our claim on how life’s evolution would apparently have been rendered utterly impossible by comparatively minor alterations in physical force strengths, elementary particle masses and so forth. There is no need for us to ask whether very great alterations in these affairs would have rendered it fully possible once more, let alone whether physical worlds conforming to very different laws could have been observer-permitting without being in any way fine tuned. Here it can be useful to think of a fly on a wall, surrounded by an empty region. A bullet hits the fly Two explanations suggest themselves. Perhaps many bullets are hitting the wall or perhaps a marksman fired the bullet. There is no need to ask whether distant areas of the wall, or other quite different walls, are covered with flies so that more or less any bullet striking there would have hit one. The important point is that the local area contains just the one fly." [Emphasis his.]
PPPS: And, on multiverse speculation, what is the empirical observational warrant for such a spectacular violation of avoiding multiplying hypothesised entities without necessity. Where also, why are we not observing say a Boltzmann brain fluctuation world instead of what we experience? Of is your BB hooked up to a vat and neural lace prompting perception of a world that is a grand Plato's Cave shadow show world? --> That's just the beginning of what you are up against.kairosfocus_{June 2, 2017
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Bob O'H - I have to disagree with the example of the Birthday Problem. The Birthday Problem basically makes the point that some events that most of us would intuitively consider low probability are actually high probability. This is different from the claim of Miller, Kitcher et al, that low probability events happen all the time.hnorman5_{June 2, 2017
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Sorry OT, but nice visual metaphor for fine-tuning, and some biochemical processes: https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/DBPi2bkUQAAAEu0.mp4steveO_{June 2, 2017
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JDH - I think you need to take more courses in probability. The Birthday Problem is nice example of how unlikely things do happen quite often.Bob O'H_{June 2, 2017
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@jdk - I don't think you understood what I meant. I know that low probability things happen all the time. I just don't think it is an impressive argument. People need to know the difference between a singular event that happened, and the likelihood of a given explanation for said event actually being the cause of the event. (I know that was kind of clumsily worded, and if your knowledge of probability has better terms for it, I would appreciate it.) I find the whole materialist argument downright foolish. It seems to go something like this... 1. Let me just assert there is no Creator (designer). 2. Gosh these things we see only on earth look incredibly designed. 3. Since we know there is not God isn't it incredible what creative power RM+NS plus (all the other parts of neo-Darwinsim) has!!! Me: Excuse me, Mr. Materialist, how do you know that evolution is so powerful. MM: Because of the wonderful example we have of this world which, which I have to admit - looks like it was designed, even though we know it CANNOT be designed ( because by the strength of assertion, we have declared there can be no such thing as evidence for design ).JDH_{June 2, 2017
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The main point against the unlikely events of OOL from non life or a universe from nothing happening is that these events have to be possible to begin with.Example as follows- If I take a steel ball bearing in my hand then outstretch my hand and let the ball bearing fall from my hand what direction will it go , we all know it will fall toward the ground , what if I try this 100 times what direction will the bearing go each time. Now what if I get a billion of my friends and we try this ball bearing act every 5 seconds for 50 years , at what point with the unlikely event of a ball bearing not falling to the ground but just staying in the space where my hand released it, its zero ,because we know the effects of gravity on ball bearings.So before any unlikely event happens I first want evidence it can happen, and that evidence cannot be just wishful thinking.Marfin_{June 1, 2017
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re 1: Hmmm. I taught probability, and low probability things do happen all the time. You should join us at the "Darwinism" thread and read through the discussion.jdk_{June 1, 2017
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If I shuffle a deck of cards and pull four aces off the top, the probability that it happened is one. The probability of it happening in the future is one in 270,725. That is the problem with the fine tuning argument. And the combinatorial explosion argument. They are both fatally flawed from the start.kmidpuddle_{June 1, 2017
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Brilliant atheist physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed is a firm believer in the multiverse. Loads of cool math involved in this belief. However, he is on record claiming that if there is only one universe - our highly unlikely one - there is a God. But that's just him.ppolish_{June 1, 2017
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JDH, unlikely things DO happen all the time in the Multiverse. As often as likely things do lol. Multiverse makes probability courses less useful than basket weaving. Infinite uses for baskets in the multiverse you know.ppolish_{June 1, 2017
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One reason why it is helpful to discuss blind search challenge in large configuration spaces.kairosfocus_{June 1, 2017
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People who are impressed with the argument "unlikely things happen all the time" need to take a basic course in probability.JDH_{June 1, 2017
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