Dear All,
The following are excerpts from Chapters 13 & 14 of my new book, entitled ...
.
Not strictly a Zen Book, but more a Buddhism influenced book on our place in time and space, my thesis (as the above subtitle describes) presents many of the incredible happenstances of universal, planetary, biological, evolutionary, world, societal and personal family history that had to happen 'just so' for you, the reader, to have been born (which, I am assuming, you were, so they did.
). I have just two more chapters to write to finish the book. Below, I present portions of Chapter 13 (which asks if it is truly odd that you find yourself alive despite the once seeming odds) and Chapter 14 (on whether the existence of a multiverse explains things.) Enjoy. All comments, suggestions and criticisms welcome.
.
From CHAPTER 13: ARE THE ODDS TRULY ODD?
In these pages, I have been able to present but a smattering of the myriad events that led to you, dear reader, a tiny sampling amid the tangled web of milestones and seemingly fragile coincidences which reached with flawless precision from the Big Bang to your birth. In fact, for each small example I have raised, there have been countless other turning points before, after or occurring in elegant parallel, always perfectly spaced and paced as needed for you, the intricate and interlaced astronomical, chemical, solar and planetary, environmental, biological, evolutionary, neurological, world historical, social and familial occurrences which seemingly could have gone a different way, far away from you … but never once did. Your personal story is as long as the universe is long, and would require much longer in the telling were we to carefully examine and ponder each and every momentary occasion at both macro or microscopic levels, all the sequential and concurrent happenings happening anywhere in space and time at which the wheels of fate rolled around toward you rather than away … never a miss. Your being right-here-now to ponder what was required is the result.
...
[Is] it possible that things just worked out our way for no particular reason, as a roll of the dice (or better, huge strings of dice) no matter how seemingly unlikely, a simple brute fact, so let's move on?
That possibility cannot be fully rejected. Unlikely things happen each day. The news is filled with improbable stories: Someone wins a string of lotteries back to back,[1] a meteor falls out of the sky onto someone’s bed,[2] a bullet makes an unlikely ricochet off coins in someone’s pocket which spares their life,[3] someone else falls out of an exploding airplane and survives without a parachute,[4] another person is struck by lightning repeatedly and lives.[5]
Thus, perhaps there is nothing to see here, nothing more to explain. The folks who shrug it off might be correct.
However, it strikes me that the shruggers are much more likely to be wrong than right.
There are different kinds of unlikelihood: Happenings which are "too" unlikely in life do tend to call out for special explanation.
Should someone win hundreds of lotteries, as opposed to but a few, their family connections to lottery officials should be closely examined, as should the odds-beating system they might use to select numbers. Cases of lottery fraud in the past have found weighted balls in the spinning drum, tickets printed after a drawing, and simple mathematical schemes to intentionally purchase most numbers where the payoff will exceed the investment.[1] Should the other scenarios of amazing survivals repeat too frequently to certain individuals, each person living through dozens upon dozens of meteors, bullet ricochets, mid-air falls and lightning strikes, our suspicions of some cheat, set-up, stunt, misrepresentation or misreporting would rightly be aroused.
In comparison, your life places you as the survivor of billions of years of predatory attacks, meteor strikes, threatening projectiles and ricochets, falls and lightning strikes, serious illnesses and bloody accidents, not to mention every other kind of deadly or life giving incident which played a role in your familial line.
To get some feel for what you have come through, imagine your facing a firing squad consisting of a trillion guns to be discharged in sequence (representing all factors needed for your birth), all pointed directly at your heart, which trillion trigger pulls are followed, to your amazement, by your nonetheless surviving due to every single gun having misfired or missed without exception (for any one would have killed you). It could just be your lucky day!
On the other hand, perhaps more open to supposition would be a cause as yet unknown which led to the surprising outcome, such as something amiss with the gunpowder or bullets, a common gun design flaw in the barrels which would account for the strange event, universal sympathy for your plight among the soldiers, a horrible practical joke, if not an intentional act of sabotage by some agent. While raw chance is possible, it would be foolish not to suspect some such scenario as the more likely explanation, i.e., that something unknown shortened the odds and led to the ridiculously improbable result.
...
The reason that you rise to the level of a “surprising outcome” calling for special explanation is not just because you are surprised. There is nothing particularly surprising about someone, somewhere, being surprised at their own existence. What is truly surprising and strange is that it is not just any someone, somewhere, but you specifically, most subjectively self-aware of yourself now, who is having the experience. It is much like saying that there is no wonder in falling stones falling into some random pattern, and there is no surprise that enough stones, falling enough times in enough places, will sometimes fall into the pattern of a portrait resembling somebody. As well, it is no surprise that, across the galaxies, falling stones might from time to time fall into patterns very much resembling your fine countenance right down to every hair and beauty mark. However, when you personally experience an avalanche and, looking down as the dust settles, find your own face painted in pebbles staring back at you with photographic precision …
… that extra factor of your looking at your own self, right here and now, as the product of what were supposedly chance events is what makes all the difference in the world. It still might be chance and nothing more, it is true, but much more likely is something’s being afoot. Simply stated, it is highly probable that some aspect of nature has worked an as yet unknown process, a fix, an odds shortening explanation, or some trickster has pulled off a magic trick, some illusion or hidden stunt, to account for the incredibly ridiculous outcome.
...
In the narrow viewpoint of “something was bound to happen, so it might as well have been me,” an obvious fact is missed: Namely, that it is you. Please look at each “near death” moment, incredible escape, rugged endurance, patrilineal fathering and matrilineal mothering as but another hand of cards after hand of cards that you, via your direct ancestors, won for some crazy reason. Yes, a hand of poker can come up all aces, and perhaps, sometimes, 100 hands in a row will do so even if foolishly unlikely. However, in your personal case … in light of every birth, maturing, meeting, mating and raising of each and every forebear into the next generation despite all the potential dangers and deathtraps overcome … you have been dealt too many winning hands in a row not to seriously consider that the game is possibly fixed. It may be “luck of the draw,” but, drawing on logic, there comes a point where it is more likely the product of a loaded deck instead.
We passed that point in our story long ago.
If you disagree with me, please come over to my house tonight for a little friendly poker. You bring your money. I will bring the cards.
...
Once your embryo was conceived, of course, the probability of your conception became 100%, or as sometimes said, “1.” Something that is 100% is no mystery at all. Sperm met egg, and that’s all she wrote. The odds of a basketball being tossed out of an airplane and, though unaimed and unaided in its descent, passing cleaning through a basketball hoop at ground level are incredibly low (although child’s play compared to the pre-conceived odds of your conception, which is more on the order of millions of basketballs over billions of years successfully traversing hoops several times each day without a single miss.) Still, if it were to happen, the odds would become 100% once it happened.
Even though something may already be a fait accompli, however, human beings have evolved an unique ability to imagine or mathematically model likely conditions as they would have existed at any point in time of the past. We can thus trace the various possible historical routes that would have trailed off in directions away from your eventual conception and birth, compared to the relatively few trails which would have arrived at your life from any such point. If things happen as they appear to happen in the universe, with events having the potential to head other ways than they do, what were the odds of your conception and birth at, say, a second after the Big Bang? Or at the time of the ignition of our sun? Or when life first appeared on this planet? Or when the dinosaurs walked the Earth? Or in 1632 C.E.? Or a year before your birth?
...
In a nutshell, it is not so surprising that there is somebody here, some creature or no creature. It is not shocking to hear that, in a vast universe, your particular number, with its necessary conditions, might have rolled on the dice table somewhere. But to find that this very self-aware you, here and now, is you self-aware here and now … that is different from just anyone or anywhere.
First, your experience of you is special because of the qualia (the immediacy of subjective, conscious experience) of “your being you” which makes it qualitatively different from any other known phenomena in the universe. Your experience of “your being you” is different from just “some someone experiencing being someone” or an equivalent experience on the part of other sentient beings of “their being them,” let alone nobody experiencing nothing. It is not that someone is experiencing such qualia, but that one someone is your most intimate you.
Second, even if a large number of creatures, those that came to exist are miniscule in number compared to all the ‘never came to be’ creatures, not to mention all the apparently inanimate matter of the universe. That puts you right away in a very unique, extremely small club when compared to all things and places in the universe that do not seem to have experience of themself. As far as we know, rocks do not experience being rocks, and chairs do not experience being chairs, at least in any way that we might relate to. Maybe some simpler animals have some simple experience of themselves. However, as far as we know, only the relatively small number of complex sentient beings with complex brain structures (or the equivalent) enabling complex thought can experience being a complex sentient being.
Furthermore, you are not just any sentient being, some place, experiencing their being themself. You are you who is, right now, experiencing you here and now. Complex sentient beings are rare enough in comparison to all the creatures and inanimate objects that are not sentient in such way. However, the fact that one member of that already relatively tiny club turns out to be you, and not just anyone else among all the others, makes the situation that much more ridiculous. It is only when the fact of your self-awareness is combined with the absurd odds for that to be so, that the two together are astounding.
...
There are important distinctions between legitimate luck and suspicious patterns of winning that casinos use to assess whether someone might be cheating (for example, via the use of loaded dice, a spy, an inside fix or magnets to manipulate metal objects) or employing a shrewd advantageous strategy (such as card counting). ... . A casino gambler is happy to win some and lose some, and still win overall. Nobody expects to win every roll or hand. You, however, for your life, seemingly could not afford even a single bad hand. If nature and all history needed to turn your way were you to be you, it did so. Period.
A pit boss who did not suspect tampering, collusion, hidden devices or the like under such conditions would be corrupt, daft, asleep or blind. Fire him. Period. Maybe he is even in on it.
From CHAPTER 14: MULTIVERSE, MULTI-YOU
Let us now expand our vision from a single universe to an ensemble ....
Our casino might not be the only casino. There may be a vast, perhaps infinite multiverse of universes, endless casinos, each slightly different in how it plays its games. Or this one gambling room of ours could be vastly vast, beyond our wildest imagination, a possibility demonstrated by our cutting-edge space telescopes which, every time we look, seem to find more of it. It could reach so far that, by some theories, our universe is truly bubbles of universes, each perhaps a little different. In a universe or set of universes so sweeping, even infinite, would not the possibility of your being born be vastly improved in odds or rendered inevitable, with perhaps many "yous" if not infinite "yous?" On a boundless dice table of endless rolls, every number combination is going to come up sometime, and ultimately endless times, yes?
What if the universe were so vast, or there were interminable parallel universes, such that everything that is possible comes to happen at least somewhere? Would that explain how you, dear reader, came to exist here, where you find yourself?
I would assert that no, the existence of a multiverse would not …
… not unless we radically change common understanding about what it means for you to be “you.”
...
One possible solution to the mystery of our finding ourself in a universe so well suited to complex life is that, by a so-called “selection effect,” we simply could not find ourself in a universe that was not so. By this notion, if there is a multiverse of universes, each with somewhat different conditions, we find ourselves alive as observers in a universe suited so well for life because we could not find ourselves alive in one not suited for life. In fact, the vast majority of universes may be unsuited for life but, because living observers cannot exist in universes that do not support life, it is unsurprising that we find ourselves in one of the hospitable ones.
There is a bit of circular logic to it.
... As hopefully you have noted by now, dear reader, the focus of this book is not merely “fine tuning” suited to some life, or any complex life, somewhere in this universe. Nor is it examining a “selection effect” to explain merely why any complex life might find themselves alive in some hospitable universe. Those questions are enigmatic enough, but the enigma that is “you” is much more specific: I point to the fact of apparent “ultra-fine tuning” by which this universe, including the physical, chemical and biological conditions within it and its entire course of history over billions of years, seems to have been amazingly tuned to the conditions for your birth, dear reader. That might imply the need for an “ultra-selection effect,” by which you find yourself alive in a universe with the precise physical, chemical and biological conditions plus entire course of history required for you most particularly, dear reader, because you could not find yourself in any other universe lacking the same.
...
A first objection to some “ultra-selection effect” as explanation for your finding yourself in a universe “ultra-fine tuned” for you invokes the so-called “inverse gambler's fallacy.” Namely, it is fallacious to conclude, based on witnessing an apparently unlikely outcome in a random process, that the process must have occurred many times before as explanation for the witnessed unlikelihood. ...
In his book “Why? The Purpose of the Universe,”[1] philosopher Philip Goff applies the fallacy to the multiverse:
Let’s say you and I walk into a casino, and the first thing we see is somebody having an extraordinary run of luck, rolling double 6 after double 6. I say, ‘Wow, the casino must be full tonight.’ Confused, you ask me to clarify my line of reasoning. I say, ‘Well, if there are only a few people playing in the casino tonight, it’s improbable that you’d get somebody having such an incredible run of luck. But if there are very many people playing, it’s not so improbable that one of them would happen to have a run of good luck.’ This reasoning is also fallacious. We’ve only observed one person, and how many other people there are in the casino has no bearing on the odds of the one person we’ve observed rolling well. This is the inverse gambler’s fallacy.
...
To put it another way, if “this very you” in this life gets hit by a bus, it seemingly would not do poor dead “this very you” any good at all even were you somehow continuing on as the other “yous.” As the bus is speeding toward your “this very you,” about to run “this very you” over, it is likely not much comfort were your final thought that there are other “yous” scattered amongst the stars, or in parallel universes, or that “you” will appear again when conditions are right. On the other hand if, somehow, you are continuing on as “this very you” in the other “yous,” then that entails a radical redefinition of the notion of where your life starts and stops, and implies that your death here is only one way to see things. In the meantime, “this very you,” the only you that you seem able to truly know, is roadkill.
Frankly, I would hesitate to define the other “yous” as “this very you” unless the you reading these words right now could somehow experience being them. Furthermore, if you cannot experience being any other “you” but the one reading these words right now, we are still left with the mystery of how the “you” who is now experiencing, here and now, reading these words ended up in “this very” universe so perfectly suited to letting you be reading these words here and now. The other “yous,” even should they exist, just don’t explain that fact. And, if you are not aware of them, what use are they to you? The other “you” or “yous” do “this very you” no good. We might say that “this very you” is really the only “you” that you have, whatever we might say about your relationship or identity with any other “you.” The other “yous” may come and go, be born and die through the ages and in countless galaxies or parallel realms, but that does not do much to help explain how “this very you” (the one that you are certainly most concerned about and intimate with) was born here, on this Earth and this time line.
Gassho, J
stlah
The following are excerpts from Chapters 13 & 14 of my new book, entitled ...
.
ULTRA-FINE TUNING
The improbable, implausible, nearly impossible twists and turns
of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, human history and more,
from the Big Bang to your own Birth.
The improbable, implausible, nearly impossible twists and turns
of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, human history and more,
from the Big Bang to your own Birth.
Not strictly a Zen Book, but more a Buddhism influenced book on our place in time and space, my thesis (as the above subtitle describes) presents many of the incredible happenstances of universal, planetary, biological, evolutionary, world, societal and personal family history that had to happen 'just so' for you, the reader, to have been born (which, I am assuming, you were, so they did.
). I have just two more chapters to write to finish the book. Below, I present portions of Chapter 13 (which asks if it is truly odd that you find yourself alive despite the once seeming odds) and Chapter 14 (on whether the existence of a multiverse explains things.) Enjoy. All comments, suggestions and criticisms welcome..
~ ~ ~
From CHAPTER 13: ARE THE ODDS TRULY ODD?
In these pages, I have been able to present but a smattering of the myriad events that led to you, dear reader, a tiny sampling amid the tangled web of milestones and seemingly fragile coincidences which reached with flawless precision from the Big Bang to your birth. In fact, for each small example I have raised, there have been countless other turning points before, after or occurring in elegant parallel, always perfectly spaced and paced as needed for you, the intricate and interlaced astronomical, chemical, solar and planetary, environmental, biological, evolutionary, neurological, world historical, social and familial occurrences which seemingly could have gone a different way, far away from you … but never once did. Your personal story is as long as the universe is long, and would require much longer in the telling were we to carefully examine and ponder each and every momentary occasion at both macro or microscopic levels, all the sequential and concurrent happenings happening anywhere in space and time at which the wheels of fate rolled around toward you rather than away … never a miss. Your being right-here-now to ponder what was required is the result.
...
[Is] it possible that things just worked out our way for no particular reason, as a roll of the dice (or better, huge strings of dice) no matter how seemingly unlikely, a simple brute fact, so let's move on?
That possibility cannot be fully rejected. Unlikely things happen each day. The news is filled with improbable stories: Someone wins a string of lotteries back to back,[1] a meteor falls out of the sky onto someone’s bed,[2] a bullet makes an unlikely ricochet off coins in someone’s pocket which spares their life,[3] someone else falls out of an exploding airplane and survives without a parachute,[4] another person is struck by lightning repeatedly and lives.[5]
Thus, perhaps there is nothing to see here, nothing more to explain. The folks who shrug it off might be correct.
However, it strikes me that the shruggers are much more likely to be wrong than right.
There are different kinds of unlikelihood: Happenings which are "too" unlikely in life do tend to call out for special explanation.
Should someone win hundreds of lotteries, as opposed to but a few, their family connections to lottery officials should be closely examined, as should the odds-beating system they might use to select numbers. Cases of lottery fraud in the past have found weighted balls in the spinning drum, tickets printed after a drawing, and simple mathematical schemes to intentionally purchase most numbers where the payoff will exceed the investment.[1] Should the other scenarios of amazing survivals repeat too frequently to certain individuals, each person living through dozens upon dozens of meteors, bullet ricochets, mid-air falls and lightning strikes, our suspicions of some cheat, set-up, stunt, misrepresentation or misreporting would rightly be aroused.
In comparison, your life places you as the survivor of billions of years of predatory attacks, meteor strikes, threatening projectiles and ricochets, falls and lightning strikes, serious illnesses and bloody accidents, not to mention every other kind of deadly or life giving incident which played a role in your familial line.
To get some feel for what you have come through, imagine your facing a firing squad consisting of a trillion guns to be discharged in sequence (representing all factors needed for your birth), all pointed directly at your heart, which trillion trigger pulls are followed, to your amazement, by your nonetheless surviving due to every single gun having misfired or missed without exception (for any one would have killed you). It could just be your lucky day!
On the other hand, perhaps more open to supposition would be a cause as yet unknown which led to the surprising outcome, such as something amiss with the gunpowder or bullets, a common gun design flaw in the barrels which would account for the strange event, universal sympathy for your plight among the soldiers, a horrible practical joke, if not an intentional act of sabotage by some agent. While raw chance is possible, it would be foolish not to suspect some such scenario as the more likely explanation, i.e., that something unknown shortened the odds and led to the ridiculously improbable result.
...
The reason that you rise to the level of a “surprising outcome” calling for special explanation is not just because you are surprised. There is nothing particularly surprising about someone, somewhere, being surprised at their own existence. What is truly surprising and strange is that it is not just any someone, somewhere, but you specifically, most subjectively self-aware of yourself now, who is having the experience. It is much like saying that there is no wonder in falling stones falling into some random pattern, and there is no surprise that enough stones, falling enough times in enough places, will sometimes fall into the pattern of a portrait resembling somebody. As well, it is no surprise that, across the galaxies, falling stones might from time to time fall into patterns very much resembling your fine countenance right down to every hair and beauty mark. However, when you personally experience an avalanche and, looking down as the dust settles, find your own face painted in pebbles staring back at you with photographic precision …
… that extra factor of your looking at your own self, right here and now, as the product of what were supposedly chance events is what makes all the difference in the world. It still might be chance and nothing more, it is true, but much more likely is something’s being afoot. Simply stated, it is highly probable that some aspect of nature has worked an as yet unknown process, a fix, an odds shortening explanation, or some trickster has pulled off a magic trick, some illusion or hidden stunt, to account for the incredibly ridiculous outcome.
...
In the narrow viewpoint of “something was bound to happen, so it might as well have been me,” an obvious fact is missed: Namely, that it is you. Please look at each “near death” moment, incredible escape, rugged endurance, patrilineal fathering and matrilineal mothering as but another hand of cards after hand of cards that you, via your direct ancestors, won for some crazy reason. Yes, a hand of poker can come up all aces, and perhaps, sometimes, 100 hands in a row will do so even if foolishly unlikely. However, in your personal case … in light of every birth, maturing, meeting, mating and raising of each and every forebear into the next generation despite all the potential dangers and deathtraps overcome … you have been dealt too many winning hands in a row not to seriously consider that the game is possibly fixed. It may be “luck of the draw,” but, drawing on logic, there comes a point where it is more likely the product of a loaded deck instead.
We passed that point in our story long ago.
If you disagree with me, please come over to my house tonight for a little friendly poker. You bring your money. I will bring the cards.
...
Once your embryo was conceived, of course, the probability of your conception became 100%, or as sometimes said, “1.” Something that is 100% is no mystery at all. Sperm met egg, and that’s all she wrote. The odds of a basketball being tossed out of an airplane and, though unaimed and unaided in its descent, passing cleaning through a basketball hoop at ground level are incredibly low (although child’s play compared to the pre-conceived odds of your conception, which is more on the order of millions of basketballs over billions of years successfully traversing hoops several times each day without a single miss.) Still, if it were to happen, the odds would become 100% once it happened.
Even though something may already be a fait accompli, however, human beings have evolved an unique ability to imagine or mathematically model likely conditions as they would have existed at any point in time of the past. We can thus trace the various possible historical routes that would have trailed off in directions away from your eventual conception and birth, compared to the relatively few trails which would have arrived at your life from any such point. If things happen as they appear to happen in the universe, with events having the potential to head other ways than they do, what were the odds of your conception and birth at, say, a second after the Big Bang? Or at the time of the ignition of our sun? Or when life first appeared on this planet? Or when the dinosaurs walked the Earth? Or in 1632 C.E.? Or a year before your birth?
...
In a nutshell, it is not so surprising that there is somebody here, some creature or no creature. It is not shocking to hear that, in a vast universe, your particular number, with its necessary conditions, might have rolled on the dice table somewhere. But to find that this very self-aware you, here and now, is you self-aware here and now … that is different from just anyone or anywhere.
First, your experience of you is special because of the qualia (the immediacy of subjective, conscious experience) of “your being you” which makes it qualitatively different from any other known phenomena in the universe. Your experience of “your being you” is different from just “some someone experiencing being someone” or an equivalent experience on the part of other sentient beings of “their being them,” let alone nobody experiencing nothing. It is not that someone is experiencing such qualia, but that one someone is your most intimate you.
Second, even if a large number of creatures, those that came to exist are miniscule in number compared to all the ‘never came to be’ creatures, not to mention all the apparently inanimate matter of the universe. That puts you right away in a very unique, extremely small club when compared to all things and places in the universe that do not seem to have experience of themself. As far as we know, rocks do not experience being rocks, and chairs do not experience being chairs, at least in any way that we might relate to. Maybe some simpler animals have some simple experience of themselves. However, as far as we know, only the relatively small number of complex sentient beings with complex brain structures (or the equivalent) enabling complex thought can experience being a complex sentient being.
Furthermore, you are not just any sentient being, some place, experiencing their being themself. You are you who is, right now, experiencing you here and now. Complex sentient beings are rare enough in comparison to all the creatures and inanimate objects that are not sentient in such way. However, the fact that one member of that already relatively tiny club turns out to be you, and not just anyone else among all the others, makes the situation that much more ridiculous. It is only when the fact of your self-awareness is combined with the absurd odds for that to be so, that the two together are astounding.
...
There are important distinctions between legitimate luck and suspicious patterns of winning that casinos use to assess whether someone might be cheating (for example, via the use of loaded dice, a spy, an inside fix or magnets to manipulate metal objects) or employing a shrewd advantageous strategy (such as card counting). ... . A casino gambler is happy to win some and lose some, and still win overall. Nobody expects to win every roll or hand. You, however, for your life, seemingly could not afford even a single bad hand. If nature and all history needed to turn your way were you to be you, it did so. Period.
A pit boss who did not suspect tampering, collusion, hidden devices or the like under such conditions would be corrupt, daft, asleep or blind. Fire him. Period. Maybe he is even in on it.
~ ~ ~
From CHAPTER 14: MULTIVERSE, MULTI-YOU
Let us now expand our vision from a single universe to an ensemble ....
Our casino might not be the only casino. There may be a vast, perhaps infinite multiverse of universes, endless casinos, each slightly different in how it plays its games. Or this one gambling room of ours could be vastly vast, beyond our wildest imagination, a possibility demonstrated by our cutting-edge space telescopes which, every time we look, seem to find more of it. It could reach so far that, by some theories, our universe is truly bubbles of universes, each perhaps a little different. In a universe or set of universes so sweeping, even infinite, would not the possibility of your being born be vastly improved in odds or rendered inevitable, with perhaps many "yous" if not infinite "yous?" On a boundless dice table of endless rolls, every number combination is going to come up sometime, and ultimately endless times, yes?
What if the universe were so vast, or there were interminable parallel universes, such that everything that is possible comes to happen at least somewhere? Would that explain how you, dear reader, came to exist here, where you find yourself?
I would assert that no, the existence of a multiverse would not …
… not unless we radically change common understanding about what it means for you to be “you.”
...
One possible solution to the mystery of our finding ourself in a universe so well suited to complex life is that, by a so-called “selection effect,” we simply could not find ourself in a universe that was not so. By this notion, if there is a multiverse of universes, each with somewhat different conditions, we find ourselves alive as observers in a universe suited so well for life because we could not find ourselves alive in one not suited for life. In fact, the vast majority of universes may be unsuited for life but, because living observers cannot exist in universes that do not support life, it is unsurprising that we find ourselves in one of the hospitable ones.
There is a bit of circular logic to it.
... As hopefully you have noted by now, dear reader, the focus of this book is not merely “fine tuning” suited to some life, or any complex life, somewhere in this universe. Nor is it examining a “selection effect” to explain merely why any complex life might find themselves alive in some hospitable universe. Those questions are enigmatic enough, but the enigma that is “you” is much more specific: I point to the fact of apparent “ultra-fine tuning” by which this universe, including the physical, chemical and biological conditions within it and its entire course of history over billions of years, seems to have been amazingly tuned to the conditions for your birth, dear reader. That might imply the need for an “ultra-selection effect,” by which you find yourself alive in a universe with the precise physical, chemical and biological conditions plus entire course of history required for you most particularly, dear reader, because you could not find yourself in any other universe lacking the same.
...
A first objection to some “ultra-selection effect” as explanation for your finding yourself in a universe “ultra-fine tuned” for you invokes the so-called “inverse gambler's fallacy.” Namely, it is fallacious to conclude, based on witnessing an apparently unlikely outcome in a random process, that the process must have occurred many times before as explanation for the witnessed unlikelihood. ...
In his book “Why? The Purpose of the Universe,”[1] philosopher Philip Goff applies the fallacy to the multiverse:
Let’s say you and I walk into a casino, and the first thing we see is somebody having an extraordinary run of luck, rolling double 6 after double 6. I say, ‘Wow, the casino must be full tonight.’ Confused, you ask me to clarify my line of reasoning. I say, ‘Well, if there are only a few people playing in the casino tonight, it’s improbable that you’d get somebody having such an incredible run of luck. But if there are very many people playing, it’s not so improbable that one of them would happen to have a run of good luck.’ This reasoning is also fallacious. We’ve only observed one person, and how many other people there are in the casino has no bearing on the odds of the one person we’ve observed rolling well. This is the inverse gambler’s fallacy.
...
To put it another way, if “this very you” in this life gets hit by a bus, it seemingly would not do poor dead “this very you” any good at all even were you somehow continuing on as the other “yous.” As the bus is speeding toward your “this very you,” about to run “this very you” over, it is likely not much comfort were your final thought that there are other “yous” scattered amongst the stars, or in parallel universes, or that “you” will appear again when conditions are right. On the other hand if, somehow, you are continuing on as “this very you” in the other “yous,” then that entails a radical redefinition of the notion of where your life starts and stops, and implies that your death here is only one way to see things. In the meantime, “this very you,” the only you that you seem able to truly know, is roadkill.
Frankly, I would hesitate to define the other “yous” as “this very you” unless the you reading these words right now could somehow experience being them. Furthermore, if you cannot experience being any other “you” but the one reading these words right now, we are still left with the mystery of how the “you” who is now experiencing, here and now, reading these words ended up in “this very” universe so perfectly suited to letting you be reading these words here and now. The other “yous,” even should they exist, just don’t explain that fact. And, if you are not aware of them, what use are they to you? The other “you” or “yous” do “this very you” no good. We might say that “this very you” is really the only “you” that you have, whatever we might say about your relationship or identity with any other “you.” The other “yous” may come and go, be born and die through the ages and in countless galaxies or parallel realms, but that does not do much to help explain how “this very you” (the one that you are certainly most concerned about and intimate with) was born here, on this Earth and this time line.
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Gassho, J
stlah
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