From Paley to Hawking: Design and the Anthropic Principle

Hi, I hope everyone is enjoying their Saturday and is looking forward to some light weekend reading (turned out to be not so light...) as I finish a trilogy of posts on probability. This post will be a summation of the arguments of William Paley, and its modern portrayal by Dinesh D'Souza which I am taking from his debate with Daniel Dennett. They are just two people in a long line that look at the universe and see design in the universe.

I was going to sum up William Paley in my own words, but the Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy did a fine job in doing that for me. Paley's argument from design is,

"In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer that for anything I knew to the contrary it had lain there forever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place. I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I knew the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, namely, that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive—what we could not discover in the stone—that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose … [The requisite] mechanism being observed … the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker. Every observation which was made in our first chapter concerning the watch may be repeated with strict propriety concerning the eye, concerning animals, concerning plants, concerning, indeed, all the organized parts of the works of nature. … [T]he eye … would be alone sufficient to support the conclusion which we draw from it, as to the necessity of an intelligent Creator..."


Paley is looking around the world and seeing complex things, that appear to work together to have a purpose and so he generates a view that is not outlandish, yet still doesn't hold up pasted even cursory scrutiny now. In minutes the information about the transitional states of the eye can be found, from going to simple cells being able to detect light to the eyes we have today. Two good pages for this information I found was The evolution of the mollusc eye and a15 minute video of  Richard Dawkins' explanation. This can be done just as easily to show the natural design of Birds, Whales, or even the bacterial flagellum. The designs also have major flaws that a conscious designer wouldn't include, like the vestigial legs in whales, wings in some beetles, or the blind spot in the human eye. That's right there is a blind spot that can easily be demonstrated in both your eyes. This would be enough to argue agianst Paley, but the argument from design also looks at the nature of the universe and sees design there as well.

Dinesh references Stephen Hawking and his book A Brief History of Time. The area he references is between pages 126-131, where the anthropic principle is brought up. It is shown that there are many different values that could exist for the laws of physics as we know them today, and the example of the electric charge of an electron is given. If the charge of the electron was only slightly different, stars either wouldn't have been able to burn hydrogen and helium, or else they would not have exploded. Hawking goes so far to say that,

"This means [The initial rate of expansion of the universe having to be carefully chosen] that the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time. It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us."

Hawking is only able to do this because he first completely writes off the 'strong anthropic principle' for two reasons. He defines the strong anthropic principle as a belief that either there are many different universes or many different regions of a single universe. The first reason he states agianst is questioning in what sense those universes exist. The fact that there are no interactions between universes means we can use the principle of economy and cut them out.

This is something I find a little troubling, because when he left the realm of out universe and started talking about the creation of the universe before the big bang or during the big bang at a level where physics doesn't work he really left the realm of science and entered the realm of philosophy and speculation. It is fine to write off other universes (some physicists might disagree) as a scientific notion, just as God can be written off in a scientific sense until there is some empirical evidence for either, but he can't rule out either option when speculating. 

There is also an objection be to had with Hawking's use of the principle of Economy. I am of the same opinion as Karl Popper when he says that,

"My point is that only after recognising the plurality of what there is in this world can we seriously begin to apply Ockham's razor. To invert a beautiful formulation of Quine's, only if Plato's beard is sufficiently tough, and tangled by many entities, can it be worth our while to use Ockham's razor. That the razor's edge will be dulled in being used for this tough job is only to be expected. The job will no doubt be painful. But it is all in a day's work."

The principle of economy, principle of parsimony, or Ockham's razor shouldn't be used to dismiss a theory or idea out of hand, which Hawking is clearly guilty of. The theory may be dismissed as something that can't explain the physics of the start of the universe, but when he moves into the realm of speculation, especially in an area where empirical evidence cannot be given, a theory cannot be written off by the pure lack of evidence.

The second reason is that is that the strong anthropic principle would claim that it would mean this whole vast construction he here for our sake and that idea would be very hard to believe and this leave Hawking believing either there are unified principles that created the universe or there was something that tuned those physical laws. Hawking evidently believes the former rather than the latter.

This is also overstated, by Hawking. If there are multiple universes with different physical laws, saying that this universe is fine tuned for humanity is akin to saying that this universe has the physical laws needed for human life to evolve. Just because there are multiple universes and this is the universe we specifically evolved doesn't necessarily entail that this universe was specially created for us. Hawking is jumping to a conclusion that I think few people would make. His 'weak anthropic principle' (which he agrees with) is really just the same as his 'strong anthropic principle' except there seems to be more bias in how he describes the stronger principle and he likes to talk about multiple universes in the strong one.

The universe does have some constants that if changed would make life as we know it impossible. This doesn't mean that God has to be postulated as the answer as Paley and Dinesh would have you believe. The physics of the universe may be completely improbable, but so is every dealing of 52 cards. When you look at something after the fact and judge the probability it is in one sense unfair (When you account for the whole context it makes anything improbable) or in another sense non-existent. The probability of the universe having the physics we have is 100%, it has already happened. Life must exist in a place where life is possible to exist by necessity. To answer why life is here or what created the big bang right now are areas that we can honestly just say, "I don't know"  and there is nothing wrong with that.

As always this was longer and more technical then I hoped it would be, so thanks for those of you who made it through it. I also only deal with the anthropic principle as defined by Hawking, so there is no need to postulate other definitions. I like Chomsky's idea of letting who you are talking about create the definitions, as it creates both understanding and fairness. Anyway, thanks for reading.

-The Moral Skeptic

A Deck of Cards Both Ways: An analysis of The Boeing 747 Argument and A Speech from The Watchmen

Welcome to the blog on a sunny Thursday afternoon. I liked my last post and thought that it covered the subject matter fairly well, but I still had a couple issues that I wanted to get to but wasn't able to in my last post. They really pick up where the last post left off, but I'm fairly sure that this post will have a couple tangents, including a look at part of The Watchmen.

The topic for this blog will be slightly different as it is peoples assessment of probability. This time I will pick on the Boeing 474 argument. I'll start off by thanking Richard Dawkins for making this post a lot easier to write, as I will end up referencing both the God Delusion and The Selfish Gene. After that I'll talk about William Paley, and his design argument. 

Anyway, so the God Delusion points out Fred Hoyle's Boeing 747 argument that amounts to this. It is an argument from the improbability for life originating on the earth. In this argument it is pointed out that the probability of life originating on Earth is akin to the to the chance that a tornado, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747 (page 113, The God Delusion). This is an interesting example, and provides an insight  into both probability and evolution. 

In the example above lets take the Boeing 747 and turn it into the process of evolution, and the scrapyard would be the earth. This is where The Selfish Gene(or other books that explain the beginning steps of evolution) really comes into play. It starts out with some chemicals joining together and remaining in a stable state. This means that, "Evolution can start with just the ordinary process of physics and chemistry. (TSG 13)" It just relies on chemicals coming together in natural states. After this all that is needed are chemicals that can make rudimentary copies of themselves, this starts evolution and can account for all life and parts of life seen today. So all that is needed in the scrapyard are chemicals coming together, and then making crude copies of themselves, so start a process where a Boeing 747 (Animal like a Cow) could be created. (I can see from here some people wanting to point out a leap I am making, in stating the transition between chemicals in a steady state and something creating a crude copy.)

Before I address that leap, I will point out  an assumption Hoyle makes and is the reason I said could be created. The assumption is that it is the Boeing 747 that must be created, and not any other complex mechanical device.  Evolution doesn't mean that anything necessarily has to be created, it happens to have created human, parrots and the platypus, but if the clock were turned back and evolution was allowed to run its course again, it might not be that any of those things would be created. So the argument should really be, the tornado creating a complex mechanical device rather than any specific device. This might just be a nitpicking error caused, by trying to create a simple example though and I wouldn't put too much weight to it.

There is a far more serious error this argument makes and it is all about looking at probability after something as happened. To show this error all one need do is shuffle and deal out a deck of 52 cards. Now after the cards are dealt judge the odds of those 52 cards being put out exactly in that order. This is a pretty difficult task, so I'll just give you the odds; The odds are 1 in 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000, a pretty impressive number I got from the Huge Numbers in a Deck of Cards Page. So that makes every time a deck is shuffled and 52 cards are dealt out even more amazing than a tornado creating a 747. I think the problem can now easily be seen. Judging the odds of something after it has happened and taking into account all the information, while ignoring the process going on always leads to a result that seems unbelievable. Appreciating the odds for something happening is no where near as important as understanding the process that helped shape those odds. Trying to determine if something happened by odds after it has already happened is insane, and really doesn't say anything about the event, except perhaps adding a level of interest and appreciation. Looking at odds doesn't determine if anything happened, examining the evidence for it happening does. Odds are for the most part astronomical and misleading. 

This is why I thought this speech in The Watchman was really un-intelligently put together. Dr. Manhattan, the smartest and most powerful person in the story, states that, "Will you smile if I admit I was wrong?" The other character then asks "About what?" and Manhattan answers with a Hoyle like statement saying, "Miracles, events of astronomical odds of occurring, like, oxygen turning into gold. I've longed to witness such an event, yet I neglect that in human coupling. Millions upon millions of cells compete to create life for generation after generation until finally your mother loves a man....and out of that agianst unfathomable odds its you." The problem of this is the same as the problem with the deck of cards, if you were to take into account anything and have that much information about the event than anything is miraculous. Manhattan has longed to see an event that amounts to any event. How amazing it is that you set that pencil in that spot, the chance that that peace of wood would travel all this way to be ignored for weeks and then end up exactly on that section of the counter, agianst unfathomable odds that pencil is there! Dr. Manhattan should longed for that event as well or any other event.

When all the information is taken into account, then the odds for anything happening is agianst unfathomable odds, the sheer lunacy of that conversation should be readily apparent after the card example. People can appreciate things happening, but to only appreciate things that happen agianst all odds still means that everything should be appreciated. To define a miracle like they did in The Watchmen degenerates all actions into miracles. This means that doctor Manhattan shouldn't just appreciate the girl being there, but also the dust being in the exact position it is, or any other thing that people would consider mundane. David Hume has a much better understanding of Miracles...but that's another blog post.

That scene was had a neat relevance to what I was taking about earlier and was a good example of misunderstanding probability within pop culture, and while I would like to end here I really have to do a paragraph to talk about the leap I was making earlier.

In the part where I talk about the beginnings of evolution I talk about chemicals in steady forms and then just leap to there being a self replicating process. I want to point out that this is a necessary leap that has to be made, and would be a much better area of attack for people like Hoyle. Here I would have to just state that it doesn't seem to far to go from self organizing chemicals, to chemicals that can make crude copies. Scientists have been able to create amino acids (the building blocks of life) from simple chemicals that were available soon after the earth was formed, by adding energy to those chemicals (TSG 14-15). The problem comes up with something people are inherently bad at; Being judges of the odds that life can arise out of those building blocks. It is an interesting part of the Drake Equation and something I might blog on later.

Those waiting for Paley will have to wait until my next post, as this one ran longer than anticipated. Thanks for reading.

-The Moral Skeptic

 

Humans Are Naturally Poor at Gauging Probability

Hi again, I hope everyone had a good long weekend or has a good long weekend coming up. Thanks for the upvotes on Reddit, and I'll try to keep the posts coming. I still have a lot of future topics in mind, so I don't anticipate any long delays between posts. If anyone has some additional information to any of my posts that they think would be interesting for me to read, just add it in a comment and I'll check it out.

Now that those issues are out of the way, I'm going to bring up a topic that has long been on my mind, but I have yet to really talk about it. The idea for this post came to me one day when I was playing crib (a card came), with my aunt. We were dealt a hand where I got three 5's and she also got a 5 (There being 6 cards in each hand). She thought that this was miraculous and complained that the deck wasn't shuffled properly, or that something that shouldn't have happened did indeed happen. There is a mistake in this belief that, if not already apparent, will become apparent quite soon, but first I will talk about three examples I know that are semi-akin to this way of thinking, and I think it shows how people are naturally poor at judging probability.

The first one comes from a great webshow, which I will unabashedly endorse, called Scam School with Brain Brushwood.  I forget which episode it comes from (I found it on youtube), but it is a scam that involves my favorite prop, a deck of cards. The other person can shuffle the deck and you just bet them for a drink that after they are done shuffling that two of the same cards will be side by side. There is no trick to this, it is just that the odds are that two of the same card will be beside each other.

Well here is an example of my research leading me to find out my beliefs were wrong. The odds of the same card being beside each other seems to be about 48%, which while higher then I suspect people would think it would be, is actually a little too low to be betting for, although it wouldn't be a bad bet at a casino. Anyone can take my word for it or read this and find out what I did (I also verified it from other sources). So Brain was wrong here, but I still like his show.

Anyway that leads me two my second, and hopefully more correct example of the coin flip example. This one is an interesting example where a teacher asks his math students to either do their homework or fake it. The homework is to flip a coin 200 times and record heads or tails for those flips. At a glance the professor can tell whether the student faked the flips or really did their work. The reason the professor can tell is that people are poor at judging probability. In a trial of 200 coin flips there is what is described as an overwhelming chance that there will be a run of six of the same outcome. Most people, including the students that faked their tests, would think that 6 heads or tails in a row would be unlikely and created results that reflected that. Even the math students were poor a judging probability. If you want to read more about it and learn about something close to this idea named Benford's Law just click here.  

My third example is the one that you are most likely to have heard previously because recently it has been making its rounds around the internet. It is what is referred to as the Monty Hall Problem, named from the Game show Lets Make a Deal, which had the host Monty Hall. The set up is there are 3 doors to choose from and you have to pick a door. After you have picked a door you have the option of keeping the door you picked or switching to the only other unopened door. This is where peoples horrible appreciation for probability comes in. Now it seems like it is a 50/50 proposition because there is one prize and two doors, but in reality, but taking a door away and offering you a door he is giving you two doors for the price of one. The reason is that there is only one prize, and he won't revile a door where the main prize is, so you are getting the chance of the two doors combined, even though the one door has been show to have a fake prize. Switching gives you a 2/3 chance and sticking with your first choice leaves you at the 1/3 you had before a door was revealed. I know this sounds counter intuitive, and people have had many problems with this, but wikipedia does a good job in explaining why that is if you didn't understand my explanation. 

What these three examples show is how easily people error in judging the odds for something, and I don't think I'm in anyway different. I had to look up the information about 2 of the same cards (any pair) being beside each other, and even Brain Brushwood, who was putting his wallet where his mouth was, was getting the odds wrong. It just goes to show why the lottery and casino's can make so much money, people have a really hard time calculating the odds of something, and that is when they are unclouded of beliefs that would lead them to think that they are 'lucky' or that they are 'due'.

Anyone should be able to see the problem in my Aunts logic now. It is the same mistake that people were making when they were faking their coin flips, they don't judge the probability correctly and think that anything like 6 heads in a row or all the 5's being dealt out is something that shouldn't happen, no matter how many flips are done or hands are dealt out. This is the belief that something 1 in a million should never happen, even if that thing is done a million times.

I'm sure people have some interesting stories about people misreading the odds so feel free to post them in the comments, thanks for reading.

- The Moral Skeptic