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The probability of the multiverse has been calculated!

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soap bubbles/Timothy Pilgrim

By mathematician (and string theory skeptic) Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong:

It seems that Carroll was arguing that the multiverse shows that we need to change our thinking about what science is, adopting his favored “abduction” and “Bayesian reasoning” framework, getting rid of falsifiability. Using this method he arrives at a probability of the multiverse as “about 50%” (funny, but that’s the same number I’d use, as for any binary option where you know nothing). So, from the Bayesians we now have the following for multiverse probability estimates:

1. Carroll: “About 50%”
2. Polchinski: “94%”

3. Rees: “Kill my dog if it’s not true”

4. Linde: “Kill me if it’s not true”

5. Weinberg: “Kill Linde and Rees’s dog if it’s not true”

Not quite sure how one explains this when arguing with people convinced that science is just opinion. More.

The demand for a multiverse has nothing to do with probability or evidence. It is a way of dealing with the apparent fine-tuning of our universe for life (the counterargument is that there could be any number of such universes, and therefore there must be).

The multiverse proponents have everything to gain and nothing to lose in demanding an end to falsifiability (and evidence-based science). If their demands are met, science as we now understand it cannot last long. Countless pressure groups in science will demand the same exemptions, citing one or another claim for fairness and justice.

But everything comes to an end, and some ages are simply more interested in science as now understood than others.

See also: The multiverse: Where everything turns out to be true, except philosophy and religion

The war on falsifiability in science continues

and

Blueprint for non-evidence-based science

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Comments
All massless elephants on frictionless ice . . . -QQuerius
June 18, 2016
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The multiverse is the emperor's new clothes. Nature must bow to supernature. Those multiverse & string theorists keep whistling in the dark to keep their courage up. Kyrie eleisonStephen Sparrow
June 17, 2016
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I have always wanted to ask Sean Carroll or Brian Greene or Richard Dawkins ( or any other proponent of the infinite number of universes). Since there are an infinite number of universes, then everything happens multiple times with different outcomes. So there a multiple universes where I ask you ( Sean or Brian or Richard), 'Do you want to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?' In at least some of those universes, the answer will be "YES". Why isn't this universe one of those?JDH
June 17, 2016
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Jesus the Christ told the disciples He was "not of this world". He also told them they "could not understand" the concept, Not of this world. NOTW. Can't launch/land a space probe on Heaven. Or Hell. Or Purgatory. My Christian Faith leads me to believe in other "worlds". Sean C & co use science to believe in other "worlds". My Christian Faith tells me how to travel to these other worlds. Sean C is still working on that one:)ppolish
June 17, 2016
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Actually, every time a atheist postulates a random infinity to try to get around the glaringly obvious Theistic implications of the Big Bang, fine-tuning, and quantum wave collapse, of the universe, then the math tells us that everything that is possible has a 100% chance of existing somewhere in that random infinity of possibilities that the atheist had postulated. Even an infinite number of Richard Dawkins riding on an infinite number of pink unicorns. Since that absurdity is epistemologically self -defeating, then the random infinity of the multiverse that was postulated to get around the Theistic implications of the fine-tuning of the universe, has a 0% chance of existing, not a 50% chance.
Why Most Atheists Believe in Pink Unicorns – May 2014 Excerpt: Given an infinite amount of time, anything that is logically possible(11) will eventually happen. So, given an infinite number of universes being created in (presumably) an infinite amount of time, you are not only guaranteed to get your universe but every other possible universe. This means that every conceivable universe exists, from ones that consist of nothing but a giant black hole, to ones that are just like ours and where someone just like you is reading a blog post just like this, except it’s titled: “Why most atheists believe in blue unicorns.” By now I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, but I’ll say it anyway. Since we know that horses are possible, and that pink animals are possible, and that horned animals are possible, then there is no logical reason why pink unicorns are not possible entities. Ergo, if infinite universes exist, then pink unicorns must necessarily exist. For an atheist to appeal to multiverse theory to deny the need of a designer infers that he believes in that theory more than a theistically suggestive single universe. And to believe in the multiverse means that one is saddled with everything that goes with it, like pink unicorns. In fact, they not only believe in pink unicorns, but that someone just like them is riding on one at this very moment, and who believes that elephants, giraffes, and zebra are merely childish fairytales. Postscript While it may be amusing to imagine atheists riding pink unicorns, it should be noted that the belief in them does not logically invalidate atheism. There theoretically could be multiple universes and there theoretically could be pink unicorns. However, there is a more substantial problem for the atheist if he wants to believe in them and he wants to remain an atheist. Since, as I said, anything can happen in the realm of infinities, one of those possibilities is the production of a being of vast intelligence and power. Such a being would be as a god to those like us, and could perhaps breach the boundaries of the multiverse to, in fact, be a “god” to this universe. This being might even have the means to create its own universe and embody the very description of the God of Christianity (or any other religion that the atheist otherwise rejects). It seems the atheist, in affirming the multiverse in order to avoid the problem of fine-tuning, finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. The further irony is that somewhere, in the great wide world of infinities, the atheist’s doppelganger is going to war against an army of theists riding on the horns of a great pink beast known to his tribesman as “The Saddlehorn Dilemma.” https://pspruett.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/why-most-atheists-believe-in-pink-unicorns/ Fine Tuning, Pink Unicorns, and The Triune God – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1145151962164402/?type=2&theater WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Infinity – Max Tegmark – January 2014 and Feb. 2015 Excerpt: Physics is all about predicting the future from the past, but inflation seems to sabotage this: when we try to predict the probability that something particular will happen, inflation always gives the same useless answer: infinity divided by infinity. The problem is that whatever experiment you make, inflation predicts that there will be infinitely many copies of you far away in our infinite space, obtaining each physically possible outcome, and despite years of tooth-grinding in the cosmology community, no consensus has emerged on how to extract sensible answers from these infinities. So strictly speaking, we physicists are no longer able to predict anything at all! http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/02/20/infinity-ruining-physics/#.VOsRyS7cBCA Too many worlds – Philip Ball – Feb. 17, 2015 Excerpt:,,, You measure the path of an electron, and in this world it seems to go this way, but in another world it went that way. That requires a parallel, identical apparatus for the electron to traverse. More – it requires a parallel you to measure it. Once begun, this process of fabrication has no end: you have to build an entire parallel universe around that one electron, identical in all respects except where the electron went. You avoid the complication of wavefunction collapse, but at the expense of making another universe (and another you).,,, http://aeon.co/magazine/science/is-the-many-worlds-hypothesis-just-a-fantasy/ A Critique of the Many Worlds Interpretation - (Inspiring Philosophy - 2014) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_42skzOHjtA&list=UU5qDet6sa6rODi7t6wfpg8g
Thus, basically, without infinite, almighty, God, everything within the atheistic/naturalistic worldview, (i.e. sense of self. observation of reality, even reality itself), collapses into self refuting, unrestrained, flights of fantasies and imagination. Verse, Video and Music:
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from Death as the “Theory of Everything” – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1143437869002478/?type=2&theater Hillsong United – Taya Smith – Touch The Sky – Acoustic Cover – Live – HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyl34fHQi3U
Moreover, it was by studying the 'logic of infinity' that Godel was finally able to bring the incompleteness theorem to completion:
Cantor, Gödel, & Turing: Incompleteness of Mathematics - video (excerpted from BBC's 'Dangerous Knowledge' documentary) https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1119397401406525/?type=2&theater
Relevant quote:
BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010 Excerpt: ,,,The physical universe is causally incomplete and therefore neither self-originating nor self-sustaining. The world of space, time, matter and energy is dependent on a reality that transcends space, time, matter and energy. This transcendent reality cannot merely be a Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions, for such things are causally inert abstract entities that do not affect the material world,,, Rather, the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency – a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.” Anything else invokes random miracles as an explanatory principle and spells the end of scientific rationality.,,, For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the “Boltzmann Brain” problem: In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. Universes do not “spontaneously create” on the basis of abstract mathematical descriptions, nor does the fantasy of a limitless multiverse trump the explanatory power of transcendent intelligent design. What Mr. Hawking’s contrary assertions show is that mathematical savants can sometimes be metaphysical simpletons. Caveat emptor. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/
bornagain77
June 17, 2016
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