We didn’t think anyone would be so honest about it, but get this from Quanta Magazine:
As things stand, the known elementary particles, codified in a 40-year-old set of equations called the “Standard Model,” lack a sensible pattern and seem astonishingly fine-tuned for life. Arkani-Hamed and other particle physicists, guided by their belief in naturalness, have spent decades devising clever ways to fit the Standard Model into a larger, natural pattern. But time and again, ever-more-powerful particle colliders have failed to turn up proof of their proposals in the form of new particles and phenomena, increasingly pointing toward the bleak and radical prospect that naturalness is dead.
…
Arkani-Hamed considers his tendency to speculate a personal weakness. “This is not false modesty, it’s really a personal weakness, but it’s true, so there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. “It’s important for me while I’m working on something to be very ideological about it. And then, of course, it’s also important after you are done to forget the ideology and move on to another one.” Thinking of the naturalness question, and his quest for a mathematical theory of nature, he continued, “But certainly in things where progress isn’t so immediate, I find it very important to convince myself that it’s the one true path. Or at least a true path.”More.
Where the heck is that dam multiverse anyway? It’s proving as elusive as the tooth fairy.
See also: How cosmology became science fiction
When physicists speak of “naturalness”, they don’t mean it in the Mother Nature sense. They mean it the “that just ain’t natural sense”.
For example, If someone wins the Lotto fifty times in a row, “that ain’t natural”. Believe me, that dude would be under investigation for that “naturalness” problem.
Inside job? Can’t find any evidence. Rigged the machine? Nope, different lottery machines were used. Some hermetically sealed before play. Just really lucky? Chance? Come on get serious say the physicists and mathematicians.
Ok, maybe he traveled back in time and played the known winning numbers? Maybe there is an infinite multiverse and somewhere someone DOES win fifty times in a row. Some one HAS to. Ding Ding Ding we have a winner. Multiverse Multiverse Multiverse!
Another example Nima Arkani Hamed has used is walking into a room and finding a pencil balanced on its point. That ain’t natural. We have a naturalness problem here,
Is the pencil glued? Nope. Held by a string? Nope. Magnets? Nope.
How about if the pencil falls over the room blows up leaving no trace? An infinite number of blown up rooms and we happen to walk into a balanced pencil room. “Well duh – if it was blown up we would not be here to observe it” say the anthropic believers. And naturalness problem solved yaa.
ppolish #2: LOL brilliant!
Snelldl, that example is Nima’s – and I agree he is brilliant. It is not easy to come up explanations for the fine tuning. Stuff like String Theory and Multiverses are backed up by very imaginative math.
I did watch a lecture by Nima once where he stated that if a natural explanation does not exist – he would become Religious. He knows chance/oops does not cut it Scientifically. Like I said, I agree he is brilliant:)
Here is the full context of the first quote:
As to the standard model itself, Steven Weinberg was instrumental in the standard model’s present formulation:
Richard Dawkins, like Arkani-Hamed presently is hoping, was also hoping for a universe that was ‘inevitable’ instead of a universe that is ‘extremely unnatural, a peculiar permutation among countless other’.
Steven Weinberg himself set Dawkins straight on just how bleak the prospect is for an ‘inevitable’ universe.
At the 8:15 minute mark of the following video, Weinberg personally explains to Dawkins just how big the ‘problem’ of the 1 in 10^120 Cosmological Constant is for those who would prefer an ‘inevitable universe’, i.e. an atheistic worldview, to be true:
Please note this particular statement by Weinberg in the preceding quote:
And indeed, as Godel proved decades ago, mathematics is necessarily ‘incomplete’:
Moreover, Gregory Chaitin’s work suggests that there are ‘an infinite number of true mathematical theorems exist that cannot be proved from any finite system of axioms’.
So as Weinberg himself stated, “we will always be left with a question ‘why are the laws nature what they are rather than some other laws?’.”
Theism readily answers Weinberg’s question without winding up in epistemological failure as the atheistic conjecture of an infinite multiverse does:
Even Stephen Hawking himself at one time admitted, and apparently subsequently forgot, that Godel’s incompleteness theorem implies that there can’t ever be a complete (mathematical) Theory of Everything:
Here are a few more notes along that line:
Here is a neat quote by Godel himself that gives a short overview of the theological ‘problem’ inherent in incompleteness:
Here are a few more papers that go over the Theistic implications inherent in Godel’s incompleteness theorem
For those who are mathematically challenged like I am, here is a bit simpler paper on the subject:
Moreover, subsequent work on Godel’s incompleteness theorem, particularly in the area of Conservation of Information theorems, has extended the theological implications of Godel’s incompleteness into biological evolution itself.
Verse and Music: