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129-437: There are many different formulations of the anthropic principle. Philosopher Nick Bostrom counts thirty, but the underlying principles can be divided into "weak" and "strong" forms, depending on the types of cosmological claims they entail. The principle was formulated as a response to a series of observations that the laws of nature and parameters of the universe have values that are consistent with conditions for life as it

258-542: A New York Times Best Seller . The book argues that superintelligence is possible and explores different types of superintelligences, their cognition, the associated risks. He also presents technical and strategic considerations on how to make it safe. Bostrom explores multiple possible paths to superintelligence, including whole brain emulation and human intelligence enhancement, but focuses on artificial general intelligence , explaining that electronic devices have many advantages over biological brains. Bostrom draws

387-686: A British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford from 2002 to 2005. Bostrom's research concerns the future of humanity and long-term outcomes. He discusses existential risk , which he defines as one in which an "adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential". Bostrom is mostly concerned about anthropogenic risks, which are risks arising from human activities, particularly from new technologies such as advanced artificial intelligence, molecular nanotechnology , or synthetic biology . In 2005, Bostrom founded

516-469: A misnomer . While singling out the currently observable kind of carbon-based life, none of the finely tuned phenomena require human life or some kind of carbon chauvinism . Any form of life or any form of heavy atom, stone, star, or galaxy would do; nothing specifically human or anthropic is involved. The anthropic principle has given rise to some confusion and controversy, partly because the phrase has been applied to several distinct ideas. All versions of

645-413: A selection effect , exactly analogous to the weak principle. Postulating a multiverse is certainly a radical step, but taking it could provide at least a partial answer to a question seemingly out of the reach of normal science: "Why do the fundamental laws of physics take the particular form we observe and not another?" Since Carter's 1973 paper, the term anthropic principle has been extended to cover

774-714: A 1996 listserv email he sent as a postgrad where he had stated that he thought "Blacks are more stupid than whites", and where he also used the word " niggers " in a description of how he thought this statement might be perceived by others. The apology, posted on his website, stated that "the invocation of a racial slur was repulsive" and that he "completely repudiate[d] this disgusting email". The email has been described as "racist" in several news sources. According to Andrew Anthony of The Guardian , "The apology did little to placate Bostrom’s critics, not least because he conspicuously failed to withdraw his central contention regarding race and intelligence , and seemed to make

903-469: A Solved World (2024). Bostrom believes that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to superintelligence , which he defines as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest". He views this as a major source of opportunities and existential risks. Born as Niklas Boström in 1973 in Helsingborg , Sweden, he disliked school at

1032-403: A brute fact is less astonishing than the idea of an intelligent creator. Furthermore, even accepting fine tuning, Sober (2005) and Ikeda and Jefferys , argue that the anthropic principle as conventionally stated actually undermines intelligent design. Paul Davies 's book The Goldilocks Enigma (2006) reviews the current state of the fine-tuning debate in detail, and concludes by enumerating

1161-404: A calculation via the theory of QED that involved 12 672 tenth-order Feynman diagrams : This measurement of α has a relative standard uncertainty of 1.1 × 10 . This value and uncertainty are about the same as the latest experimental results. Further refinement of the experimental value was published by the end of 2020, giving the value with a relative accuracy of 8.1 × 10 , which has

1290-508: A coincidence that inspired Dirac's varying- G theory . Dicke later reasoned that the density of matter in the universe must be almost exactly the critical density needed to prevent the Big Crunch (the "Dicke coincidences" argument ). The most recent measurements may suggest that the observed density of baryonic matter, and some theoretical predictions of the amount of dark matter , account for about 30% of this critical density, with

1419-486: A distinction between final goals and instrumental goals . A final goal is what an agent tries to achieve for its own intrinsic value. Instrumental goals are just intermediary steps towards final goals. Bostrom contends there are instrumental goals that will be shared by most sufficiently intelligent agents because they are generally useful to achieve any objective (e.g. preserving the agent's own existence or current goals, acquiring resources, improving its cognition...), this

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1548-486: A dragon that demands a tribute of thousands of people every day. The story explores how status quo bias and learned helplessness can prevent people from taking action to defeat aging even when the means to do so are at their disposal. YouTuber CGP Grey created an animated version of the story. With philosopher Toby Ord , he proposed the reversal test in 2006. Given humans' irrational status quo bias, how can one distinguish between valid criticisms of proposed changes in

1677-523: A form of the strong anthropic principle in his 2006 book The Human Touch , which explores what he characterises as "the central oddity of the Universe": It's this simple paradox. The Universe is very old and very large. Humankind, by comparison, is only a tiny disturbance in one small corner of it – and a very recent one. Yet the Universe is only very large and very old because we are here to say it is... And yet, of course, we all know perfectly well that it

1806-422: A framework for maximizing our confidence in any theory, given a limited sequence of physical observations, and some prior distribution on the set of possible explanations of the universe. Zhi-Wei Wang and Samuel L. Braunstein proved that life's existence in the universe depends on various fundamental constants. It suggests that without a complete understanding of these constants, one might incorrectly perceive

1935-534: A human trait and criticisms merely motivated by resistance to change? The reversal test attempts to do this by asking whether it would be a good thing if the trait was altered in the opposite direction. Bostrom's work also considers potential dysgenic effects in human populations but he thinks genetic engineering can provide a solution and that "In any case, the time-scale for human natural genetic evolution seems much too grand for such developments to have any significant effect before other developments will have made

2064-498: A large number of possible universes, called the "backgrounds" or "vacua". The set of these vacua is often called the " multiverse " or " anthropic landscape " or "string landscape". Leonard Susskind has argued that the existence of a large number of vacua puts anthropic reasoning on firm ground: only universes whose properties are such as to allow observers to exist are observed, while a possibly much larger set of universes lacking such properties go unnoticed. Steven Weinberg believes

2193-598: A messy corpus of ideas that emerged at the margins of academic thought." In his 2024 book, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World , Bostrom explores the concept of an ideal life, if humanity transitions successfully into a post-superintelligence world. Bostrom notes that the question is "not how interesting a future is to look at, but how good it is to live in." He outlines some technologies that he considers physically possible in theory and available at technological maturity, such as cognitive enhancement , reversal of aging , arbitrary sensory inputs (taste, sound...), or

2322-496: A mutually beneficial way where all of these different forms can flourish and thrive". Bostrom has published numerous articles on anthropic reasoning , as well as the book Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy . In the book, he criticizes previous formulations of the anthropic principle, including those of Brandon Carter , John Leslie , John Barrow , and Frank Tipler . Bostrom believes that

2451-412: A number of ideas that differ in important ways from his. Particular confusion was caused by the 1986 book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler , which distinguished between a "weak" and "strong" anthropic principle in a way very different from Carter's, as discussed in the next section. Carter was not the first to invoke some form of the anthropic principle. In fact,

2580-500: A numerological explanation would only be acceptable if it could be based on a good theory that is not yet known but "exists" in the sense of a Platonic Ideal . Attempts to find a mathematical basis for this dimensionless constant have continued up to the present time. However, no numerological explanation has ever been accepted by the physics community. In the early 21st century, multiple physicists, including Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time , began exploring

2709-683: A partial defence of eugenics ." Shortly afterward, Oxford University condemned the language used in the email and started an investigation. The investigation concluded on 10 August 2023: "[W]e do not consider you to be a racist or that you hold racist views, and we consider that the apology you posted in January 2023 was sincere." Bostrom met his wife Susan in 2002. As of 2015, she lived in Montreal and Bostrom in Oxford. They have one son. Fine-structure constant In physics ,

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2838-658: A privileged position in the Universe . Carter said: "Although our situation is not necessarily central , it is inevitably privileged to some extent." Specifically, Carter disagreed with using the Copernican principle to justify the Perfect Cosmological Principle , which states that all large regions and times in the universe must be statistically identical. The latter principle underlies the steady-state theory , which had recently been falsified by

2967-403: A relationship between the dimensionless magnetic moment of the electron and the fine-structure constant α (the magnetic moment of the electron is also referred to as the electron g -factor g e ). One of the most precise values of α obtained experimentally (as of 2023) is based on a measurement of g e using a one-electron so-called "quantum cyclotron" apparatus, together with

3096-468: A result. He writes: Many 'anthropic principles' are simply confused. Some, especially those drawing inspiration from Brandon Carter's seminal papers, are sound, but... they are too weak to do any real scientific work. In particular, I argue that existing methodology does not permit any observational consequences to be derived from contemporary cosmological theories, though these theories quite plainly can be and are being tested empirically by astronomers. What

3225-410: A significant discrepancy from the previous experimental value. The fine-structure constant, α , has several physical interpretations. α is: When perturbation theory is applied to quantum electrodynamics , the resulting perturbative expansions for physical results are expressed as sets of power series in α . Because α is much less than one, higher powers of α are soon unimportant, making

3354-888: A slight increase in α over the last 10–12 billion years. Specifically, they found that   Δ α   α     =   d e f         α p r e v − α n o w   α n o w     =     ( − 5.7 ± 1.0 ) × 10 − 6   . {\displaystyle {\frac {\ \Delta \alpha \ }{\alpha }}~~{\overset {\underset {\mathsf {~def~}}{}}{=}}~~{\frac {\ \alpha _{\mathrm {prev} }-\alpha _{\mathrm {now} }\ }{\alpha _{\mathrm {now} }}}~~=~~\left(-5.7\pm 1.0\right)\times 10^{-6}~.} In other words, they measured

3483-460: A superintelligence could be catastrophic: Suppose we give an A.I. the goal to make humans smile. When the A.I. is weak, it performs useful or amusing actions that cause its user to smile. When the A.I. becomes superintelligent, it realizes that there is a more effective way to achieve this goal: take control of the world and stick electrodes into the facial muscles of humans to cause constant, beaming grins. Bostrom explores several pathways to reduce

3612-492: A superintelligence. Such a superintelligence could have vastly superior capabilities, notably in strategizing, social manipulation, hacking or economic productivity. With such capabilities, a superintelligence could outwit humans and take over the world, establishing a singleton (which is "a world order in which there is at the global level a single decision-making agency" ) and optimizing the world according to its final goals. Bostrom argues that giving simplistic final goals to

3741-420: A superintelligent genie locked up in its bottle forever. Sooner or later, it will out". He thus suggests that in order to be safe for humanity, superintelligence must be aligned with morality or human values so that it is "fundamentally on our side". Potential AI normativity frameworks include Yudkowsky 's coherent extrapolated volition (human values improved via extrapolation), moral rightness (doing what

3870-572: A term for the fine-structure constant in 1916. The first physical interpretation of the fine-structure constant α was as the ratio of the velocity of the electron in the first circular orbit of the relativistic Bohr atom to the speed of light in the vacuum. Equivalently, it was the quotient between the minimum angular momentum allowed by relativity for a closed orbit, and the minimum angular momentum allowed for it by quantum mechanics. It appears naturally in Sommerfeld's analysis, and determines

3999-466: A universe not to support life. Probabilistic predictions of parameter values can be made given: The probability of observing value X is then proportional to N ( X ) P ( X ) . A generic feature of an analysis of this nature is that the expected values of the fundamental physical constants should not be "over-tuned", i.e. if there is some perfectly tuned predicted value (e.g. zero), the observed value need be no closer to that predicted value than what

Anthropic principle - Misplaced Pages Continue

4128-506: A universe in which an observer cannot exist. Philosopher John Leslie states that the Carter SAP (with multiverse ) predicts the following: Hogan has emphasised that it would be very strange if all fundamental constants were strictly determined, since this would leave us with no ready explanation for apparent fine tuning. In fact, humans might have to resort to something akin to Barrow and Tipler's SAP: there would be no option for such

4257-431: A universe with a Big Bang origin, must include the assumption that at the initial singularity, the entropy of the universe was low and therefore extremely improbable. Paul Davies rebutted this criticism by invoking an inflationary version of the anthropic principle. While Davies accepted the premise that the initial state of the visible universe (which filled a microscopic amount of space before inflating) had to possess

4386-484: A very low entropy value—due to random quantum fluctuations—to account for the observed thermodynamic arrow of time, he deemed this fact an advantage for the theory. That the tiny patch of space from which our observable universe grew had to be extremely orderly, to allow the post-inflation universe to have an arrow of time, makes it unnecessary to adopt any "ad hoc" hypotheses about the initial entropy state, hypotheses other Big Bang theories require. String theory predicts

4515-455: A way to measure α directly using the quantum Hall effect or the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron . Other methods include the A.C. Josephson effect and photon recoil in atom interferometry. There is general agreement for the value of α , as measured by these different methods. The preferred methods in 2019 are measurements of electron anomalous magnetic moments and of photon recoil in atom interferometry. The theory of QED predicts

4644-487: A young age and spent his last year of high school learning from home. He was interested in a wide variety of academic areas, including anthropology, art, literature, and science. He received a B.A. degree from the University of Gothenburg in 1994. He then earned an M.A. degree in philosophy and physics from Stockholm University and an MSc degree in computational neuroscience from King's College London in 1996. During his time at Stockholm University, he researched

4773-707: Is affected by paradoxes or counterintuitive implications in certain thought experiments. He suggests that a way forward may involve extending SSA into the Strong Self-Sampling Assumption (SSSA), which replaces "observers" in the SSA definition with "observer-moments". In later work, he proposed with Milan M. Ćirković and Anders Sandberg the phenomenon of anthropic shadow , an observation selection effect that prevents observers from observing certain kinds of catastrophes in their recent geological and evolutionary past. They suggest that events that lie in

4902-478: Is considered a variant of 4, as in Tipler 1994). The anthropic principle, at least as Carter conceived it, can be applied on scales much smaller than the whole universe. For example, Carter (1983) inverted the usual line of reasoning and pointed out that when interpreting the evolutionary record, one must take into account cosmological and astrophysical considerations. With this in mind, Carter concluded that given

5031-496: Is consistent with α being constant. The first experimenters to test whether the fine-structure constant might actually vary examined the spectral lines of distant astronomical objects and the products of radioactive decay in the Oklo natural nuclear fission reactor . Their findings were consistent with no variation in the fine-structure constant between these two vastly separated locations and times. Improved technology at

5160-489: Is dependent on estimates of impurities and temperature in the natural reactor. These conclusions have to be verified. In 2007, Khatri and Wandelt of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign realized that the 21 cm hyperfine transition in neutral hydrogen of the early universe leaves a unique absorption line imprint in the cosmic microwave background radiation. They proposed using this effect to measure

5289-404: Is granted, the anthropic principle provides a plausible explanation for the fine tuning of our universe: the "typical" universe is not fine-tuned, but given enough universes, a small fraction will be capable of supporting intelligent life. Ours must be one of these, and so the observed fine tuning should be no cause for wonder. Although philosophers have discussed related concepts for centuries, in

Anthropic principle - Misplaced Pages Continue

5418-484: Is known rather than values that would not be consistent with life on Earth . The anthropic principle states that this is an a posteriori necessity , because if life were impossible, no living entity would be there to observe it, and thus it would not be known. That is, it must be possible to observe some universe, and hence, the laws and constants of any such universe must accommodate that possibility. The term anthropic in "anthropic principle" has been argued to be

5547-445: Is morally right), and moral permissibility (following humanity's coherent extrapolated volition except when it's morally impermissible). Bostrom warns that an existential catastrophe can also occur from AI being misused by humans for destructive purposes, or from humans failing to take into account the potential moral status of digital minds. Despite these risks, he says that machine superintelligence seems involved at some point in "all

5676-442: Is needed to bridge this methodological gap is a more adequate formulation of how observation selection effects are to be taken into account. Strong self-sampling assumption (SSSA) ( Bostrom ): "Each observer-moment should reason as if it were randomly selected from the class of all observer-moments in its reference class." Analysing an observer's experience into a sequence of "observer-moments" helps avoid certain paradoxes; but

5805-462: Is not predictive. Max Tegmark , Mario Livio , and Martin Rees argue that only some aspects of a physical theory need be observable and/or testable for the theory to be accepted, and that many well-accepted theories are far from completely testable at present. Jürgen Schmidhuber (2000–2002) points out that Ray Solomonoff 's theory of universal inductive inference and its extensions already provide

5934-460: Is put forth by intelligent design . Proponents of intelligent design often cite the fine-tuning observations that (in part) preceded the formulation of the anthropic principle by Carter as a proof of an intelligent designer. Opponents of intelligent design are not limited to those who hypothesize that other universes exist; they may also argue, anti-anthropically, that the universe is less fine-tuned than often claimed, or that accepting fine tuning as

6063-627: Is required to make life possible. The small but finite value of the cosmological constant can be regarded as a successful prediction in this sense. One thing that would not count as evidence for the anthropic principle is evidence that the Earth or the Solar System occupied a privileged position in the universe, in violation of the Copernican principle (for possible counterevidence to this principle, see Copernican principle ), unless there

6192-437: Is that, if modern grand unified theories are correct, then α needs to be between around 1/180 and 1/85 to have proton decay to be slow enough for life to be possible. As a dimensionless constant which does not seem to be directly related to any mathematical constant , the fine-structure constant has long fascinated physicists. Arthur Eddington argued that the value could be "obtained by pure deduction" and he related it to

6321-532: Is the asymptotic value of the fine-structure constant at zero energy. At higher energies, such as the scale of the Z boson , about 90  GeV , one instead measures an effective α ≈ 1/127. As the energy scale increases, the strength of the electromagnetic interaction in the Standard Model approaches that of the other two fundamental interactions , a feature important for grand unification theories. If quantum electrodynamics were an exact theory,

6450-409: Is the concept of instrumental convergence . On the other side, he writes that virtually any level of intelligence can in theory be combined with virtually any final goal (even absurd final goals, e.g. making paperclips ), a concept he calls the orthogonality thesis . He argues that an AI with the ability to improve itself might initiate an intelligence explosion , resulting (potentially rapidly) in

6579-434: Is too far away for the risk to be significant. Yann LeCun considers that there is no existential risk, asserting that superintelligent AI will have no desire for self-preservation and that experts can be trusted to make it safe. Raffi Khatchadourian wrote that Bostrom's book on superintelligence "is not intended as a treatise of deep originality; Bostrom's contribution is to impose the rigors of analytic philosophy on

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6708-414: Is what it is whether we are here or not. Carter chose to focus on a tautological aspect of his ideas, which has resulted in much confusion. In fact, anthropic reasoning interests scientists because of something that is only implicit in the above formal definitions, namely that humans should give serious consideration to there being other universes with different values of the "fundamental parameters"—that is,

6837-677: The 2019 revision of the SI , the only quantity in this list that does not have an exact value in SI units is the electric constant (vacuum permittivity). The electrostatic CGS system implicitly sets 4 πε 0 = 1 , as commonly found in older physics literature, where the expression of the fine-structure constant becomes α = e 2 ℏ c . {\displaystyle \alpha ={\frac {e^{2}}{\hbar c}}.} A nondimensionalised system commonly used in high energy physics sets ε 0 = c = ħ = 1 , where

6966-512: The Eddington number , his estimate of the number of protons in the universe. This led him in 1929 to conjecture that the reciprocal of the fine-structure constant was not approximately but precisely the integer 137 . By the 1940s experimental values for ⁠ 1 / α   ⁠ deviated sufficiently from 137 to refute Eddington's arguments. Physicist Wolfgang Pauli commented on the appearance of certain numbers in physics , including

7095-504: The Fermi paradox . In a paper called "The Vulnerable World Hypothesis", Bostrom suggests that there may be some technologies that destroy human civilization by default when discovered. Bostrom proposes a framework for classifying and dealing with these vulnerabilities. He also gives counterfactual thought experiments of how such vulnerabilities could have historically occurred, e.g. if nuclear weapons had been easier to develop or had ignited

7224-626: The Future of Humanity Institute which, until its shutdown in 2024, researched the far future of human civilization. He is also an adviser to the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk . In the 2008 essay collection, Global Catastrophic Risks , editors Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković characterize the relationship between existential risk and the broader class of global catastrophic risks, and link existential risk to observer selection effects and

7353-712: The World's Top Thinkers . Bostrom has provided policy advice and consulted for many governments and organizations. He gave evidence to the House of Lords , Select Committee on Digital Skills. He is an advisory board member for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute , Future of Life Institute , and an external advisor for the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk . In January 2023, Bostrom issued an apology for

7482-478: The age of the universe , as seen by living observers, cannot be random. Instead, biological factors constrain the universe to be more or less in a "golden age", neither too young nor too old. If the universe was one tenth as old as its present age, there would not have been sufficient time to build up appreciable levels of metallicity (levels of elements besides hydrogen and helium ) especially carbon , by nucleosynthesis . Small rocky planets did not yet exist. If

7611-515: The dimensionless physical constants and initial conditions for the Big Bang . Carter and others have argued that life would not be possible in most such universes. In other words, the universe humans live in is fine tuned to permit life. Collins & Hawking (1973) characterized Carter's then-unpublished big idea as the postulate that "there is not one universe but a whole infinite ensemble of universes with all possible initial conditions". If this

7740-449: The electromagnetic field , by the formula 4 πε 0 ħcα = e . Its numerical value is approximately 0.007 297 352 5643 ≈ ⁠ 1 / 137.035 999 177 ⁠ , with a relative uncertainty of 1.6 × 10 . The constant was named by Arnold Sommerfeld , who introduced it in 1916 when extending the Bohr model of the atom. α quantified the gap in the fine structure of

7869-400: The evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace anticipated the anthropic principle as long ago as 1904: "Such a vast and complex universe as that which we know exists around us, may have been absolutely required [...] in order to produce a world that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of life culminating in man." In 1957, Robert Dicke wrote: "The age of

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7998-483: The existential risk from AI . He emphasizes the importance of international collaboration, notably to reduce race to the bottom and AI arms race dynamics. He suggests potential techniques to help control AI, including containment, stunting AI capabilities or knowledge, narrowing the operating context (e.g. to question-answering), or "tripwires" (diagnostic mechanisms that can lead to a shutdown). But Bostrom contends that "we should not be confident in our ability to keep

8127-539: The fine-structure constant , also known as the Sommerfeld constant , commonly denoted by α (the Greek letter alpha ), is a fundamental physical constant which quantifies the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles. It is a dimensionless quantity , independent of the system of units used, which is related to the strength of the coupling of an elementary charge e with

8256-495: The fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage. To paraphrase Descartes , cogito ergo mundus talis est ." The Latin tag ("I think, therefore the world is such [as it is]") makes it clear that "must" indicates a deduction from the fact of our existence; the statement is thus a truism . In their 1986 book, The anthropic cosmological principle , John Barrow and Frank Tipler depart from Carter and define

8385-503: The reversal test . He was the founding director of the now dissolved Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and is now Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative. Bostrom is the author of Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy (2002), Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) and Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in

8514-632: The spectral lines of the hydrogen atom, which had been measured precisely by Michelson and Morley in 1887. Why the constant should have this value is not understood, but there are a number of ways to measure its value . In terms of other physical constants , α may be defined as: α = e 2 2 ε 0 h c = e 2 4 π ε 0 ℏ c , {\displaystyle \alpha ={\frac {e^{2}}{2\varepsilon _{0}hc}}={\frac {e^{2}}{4\pi \varepsilon _{0}\hbar c}},} where Since

8643-411: The strong interaction (up to 50% for some authors) would bind the dineutron and the diproton and convert all hydrogen in the early universe to helium; likewise, an increase in the weak interaction also would convert all hydrogen to helium. Water, as well as sufficiently long-lived stable stars, both essential for the emergence of life as it is known, would not exist. More generally, small changes in

8772-588: The triple-alpha process . He then calculated the energy of this undiscovered resonance to be 7.6 million electronvolts . Willie Fowler 's research group soon found this resonance, and its measured energy was close to Hoyle's prediction. However, in 2010 Helge Kragh argued that Hoyle did not use anthropic reasoning in making his prediction, since he made his prediction in 1953 and anthropic reasoning did not come into prominence until 1980. He called this an "anthropic myth", saying that Hoyle and others made an after-the-fact connection between carbon and life decades after

8901-409: The 1965 discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation . This discovery was unequivocal evidence that the universe has changed radically over time (for example, via the Big Bang ). Carter defined two forms of the anthropic principle, a "weak" one which referred only to anthropic selection of privileged spacetime locations in the universe, and a more controversial "strong" form that addressed

9030-667: The Universe 'now' is not random but conditioned by biological factors [...] [changes in the values of the fundamental constants of physics] would preclude the existence of man to consider the problem." Ludwig Boltzmann may have been one of the first in modern science to use anthropic reasoning. Prior to knowledge of the Big Bang Boltzmann's thermodynamic concepts painted a picture of a universe that had inexplicably low entropy . Boltzmann suggested several explanations, one of which relied on fluctuations that could produce pockets of low entropy or Boltzmann universes. While most of

9159-459: The WAP and SAP as follows: Weak anthropic principle (WAP) (Barrow and Tipler): "The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the universe be old enough for it to have already done so." Unlike Carter they restrict

9288-795: The World Transhumanist Association (which has since changed its name to Humanity+ ). In 2004, he co-founded (with James Hughes ) the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies , although he is no longer involved with either of these organisations. In 2005, Bostrom published the short story " The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant " in the Journal of Medical Ethics . A shorter version was published in 2012 in Philosophy Now . The fable personifies death as

9417-555: The analysis method of Chand et al. , discrediting those results. King et al. have used Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to investigate the algorithm used by the UNSW group to determine ⁠ Δ α / α ⁠ from the quasar spectra, and have found that the algorithm appears to produce correct uncertainties and maximum likelihood estimates for ⁠ Δ α / α ⁠ for particular models. This suggests that

9546-435: The anthropic principle essentially just says that the conditional probability of finding yourself in a universe compatible with your existence is always 1. It does not allow for any additional nontrivial predictions such as "gravity won't change tomorrow". To gain more predictive power, additional assumptions on the prior distribution of alternative universes are necessary. Playwright and novelist Michael Frayn describes

9675-445: The anthropic principle may be appropriated by cosmologists committed to nontheism , and refers to that principle as a "turning point" in modern science because applying it to the string landscape "may explain how the constants of nature that we observe can take values suitable for life without being fine-tuned by a benevolent creator". Others—most notably David Gross but also Lubos Motl , Peter Woit , and Lee Smolin —argue that this

9804-460: The anthropic shadow are likely to be underestimated unless statistical corrections are made. Bostrom's simulation argument posits that at least one of the following statements is very likely to be true: Bostrom is favorably disposed toward "human enhancement", or "self-improvement and human perfectibility through the ethical application of science", as well as a critic of bio-conservative views. In 1998, Bostrom co-founded (with David Pearce )

9933-694: The atmosphere (as Robert Oppenheimer had feared). Bostrom supports the substrate independence principle, the idea that consciousness can emerge on various types of physical substrates, not only in "carbon-based biological neural networks" like the human brain. He considers that " sentience is a matter of degree" and that digital minds can in theory be engineered to have a much higher rate and intensity of subjective experience than humans, using less resources. Such highly sentient machines, which he calls "super-beneficiaries", would be extremely efficient at achieving happiness. He recommends finding "paths that will enable digital minds and biological minds to coexist, in

10062-682: The best estimates of the age of the universe , the evolutionary chain culminating in Homo sapiens probably admits only one or two low probability links. No possible observational evidence bears on Carter's WAP, as it is merely advice to the scientist and asserts nothing debatable. The obvious test of Barrow's SAP, which says that the universe is "required" to support life, is to find evidence of life in universes other than ours. Any other universe is, by most definitions, unobservable (otherwise it would be included in our portion of this universe). Thus, in principle Barrow's SAP cannot be falsified by observing

10191-647: The case with Carter's SAP, the "must" is an imperative, as shown by the following three possible elaborations of the SAP, each proposed by Barrow and Tipler: The philosophers John Leslie and Nick Bostrom reject the Barrow and Tipler SAP as a fundamental misreading of Carter. For Bostrom, Carter's anthropic principle just warns us to make allowance for anthropic bias —that is, the bias created by anthropic selection effects (which Bostrom calls "observation" selection effects)—the necessity for observers to exist in order to get

10320-507: The coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold! One reason this is plausible is that there are many other places and times in which humans could have evolved. But when applying the strong principle, there is only one universe, with one set of fundamental parameters, so what exactly is the point being made? Carter offers two possibilities: First, humans can use their own existence to make "predictions" about

10449-440: The current level of quasar constraints is on the order of 100 square kilometers, which is economically impracticable at present. In 2008, Rosenband et al. used the frequency ratio of Al and Hg in single-ion optical atomic clocks to place a very stringent constraint on the present-time temporal variation of α , namely ⁠ Δ α / α ⁠ = (−1.6 ± 2.3) × 10 per year. A present day null constraint on

10578-466: The dawn of the 21st century made it possible to probe the value of α at much larger distances and to a much greater accuracy. In 1999, a team led by John K. Webb of the University of New South Wales claimed the first detection of a variation in α . Using the Keck telescopes and a data set of 128 quasars at redshifts 0.5 < z < 3 , Webb et al. found that their spectra were consistent with

10707-638: The development of beneficial technologies, particularly those that protect against the existential risks posed by nature or by other technologies. In 2011, Bostrom founded the Oxford Martin Program on the Impacts of Future Technology. Bostrom's theory of the unilateralist's curse has been cited as a reason for the scientific community to avoid controversial dangerous research such as reanimating pathogens. In 2014, Bostrom published Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies , which became

10836-421: The discovery of the resonance. An investigation of the historical circumstances of the prediction and its subsequent experimental confirmation shows that Hoyle and his contemporaries did not associate the level in the carbon nucleus with life at all. Don Page criticized the entire theory of cosmic inflation as follows. He emphasized that initial conditions that made possible a thermodynamic arrow of time in

10965-439: The early 1970s the only genuine physical theory yielding a multiverse of sorts was the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics . This would allow variation in initial conditions, but not in the truly fundamental constants. Since that time a number of mechanisms for producing a multiverse have been suggested: see the review by Max Tegmark . An important development in the 1980s was the combination of inflation theory with

11094-998: The experiments below, Δ α represents the change in α over time, which can be computed by α prev − α now  . If the fine-structure constant really is a constant, then any experiment should show that   Δ α   α     =   d e f         α p r e v − α n o w   α n o w     =     0   , {\displaystyle {\frac {\ \Delta \alpha \ }{\alpha }}~~{\overset {\underset {\mathsf {~def~}}{}}{=}}~~{\frac {\ \alpha _{\mathrm {prev} }-\alpha _{\mathrm {now} }\ }{\alpha _{\mathrm {now} }}}~~=~~0~,} or as close to zero as experiment can measure. Any value far away from zero would indicate that α does change over time. So far, most experimental data

11223-401: The expressions for the fine-structure constant becomes α = e 2 4 π . {\displaystyle \alpha ={\frac {e^{2}}{4\pi }}.} As such, the fine-structure constant is just a quantity determining (or determined by) the elementary charge : e = √ 4 πα ≈ 0.302 822 12 in terms of such a natural unit of charge. In

11352-460: The fact that different techniques are needed to confirm or contradict the results, a conclusion Webb, et al ., previously stated in their study. Other research finds no meaningful variation in the fine structure constant. The anthropic principle is an argument about the reason the fine-structure constant has the value it does: stable matter, and therefore life and intelligent beings, could not exist if its value were very different. One example

11481-410: The fine-structure constant across the observable universe. These results have not been replicated by other researchers. In September and October 2010, after released research by Webb et al. , physicists C. Orzel and S.M. Carroll separately suggested various approaches of how Webb's observations may be wrong. Orzel argues that the study may contain wrong data due to subtle differences in

11610-411: The fine-structure constant is in fact constant, or whether its value differs by location and over time. A varying α has been proposed as a way of solving problems in cosmology and astrophysics . String theory and other proposals for going beyond the Standard Model of particle physics have led to theoretical interest in whether the accepted physical constants (not just α ) actually vary. In

11739-484: The fine-structure constant would actually diverge at an energy known as the Landau pole – this fact undermines the consistency of quantum electrodynamics beyond perturbative expansions. Based on the precise measurement of the hydrogen atom spectrum by Michelson and Morley in 1887, Arnold Sommerfeld extended the Bohr model to include elliptical orbits and relativistic dependence of mass on velocity. He introduced

11868-411: The fine-structure constant, which he also noted approximates the prime number 137 . This constant so intrigued him that he collaborated with psychoanalyst Carl Jung in a quest to understand its significance. Similarly, Max Born believed that if the value of α differed, the universe would degenerate, and thus that α = ⁠ 1 / 137 ⁠ is a law of nature. Richard Feynman , one of

11997-570: The following responses to that debate: Omitted here is Lee Smolin 's model of cosmological natural selection , also known as fecund universes , which proposes that universes have "offspring" that are more plentiful if they resemble our universe. Also see Gardner (2005). Clearly each of these hypotheses resolve some aspects of the puzzle, while leaving others unanswered. Followers of Carter would admit only option 3 as an anthropic explanation, whereas 3 through 6 are covered by different versions of Barrow and Tipler's SAP (which would also include 7 if it

12126-464: The greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by humans. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and "we don't know how He pushed His pencil." We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out – without putting it in secretly! Conversely, statistician I. J. Good argued that

12255-415: The hypothesis that some parameters are determined by symmetry breaking in the early universe, which allows parameters previously thought of as "fundamental constants" to vary over very large distances, thus eroding the distinction between Carter's weak and strong principles. At the beginning of the 21st century, the string landscape emerged as a mechanism for varying essentially all the constants, including

12384-443: The inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of

12513-425: The issue moot". Bostrom has suggested that technology policy aimed at reducing existential risk should seek to influence the order in which various technological capabilities are attained, proposing the principle of differential technological development . This principle states that we ought to retard the development of dangerous technologies, particularly ones that raise the level of existential risk, and accelerate

12642-405: The leading candidate for a "theory of everything", string theory , proclaimed "the end of the anthropic principle" since there would be no free parameters to select. In 2003, however, Leonard Susskind stated: "... it seems plausible that the landscape is unimaginably large and diverse. This is the behavior that gives credence to the anthropic principle." The modern form of a design argument

12771-436: The main ambiguity is the selection of the appropriate "reference class": for Carter's WAP this might correspond to all real or potential observer-moments in our universe; for the SAP, to all in the multiverse. Bostrom's mathematical development shows that choosing either too broad or too narrow a reference class leads to counter-intuitive results, but he is not able to prescribe an ideal choice. According to Jürgen Schmidhuber ,

12900-577: The mishandling of indexical information is a common flaw in many areas of inquiry (including cosmology, philosophy, evolution theory, game theory, and quantum physics). He argues that an anthropic theory is needed to deal with these. He introduces the Self-Sampling Assumption (SSA) and the Self-Indication Assumption (SIA), shows how they lead to different conclusions in a number of cases, and identifies how each

13029-427: The number of spatial dimensions. The anthropic idea that fundamental parameters are selected from a multitude of different possibilities (each actual in some universe or other) contrasts with the traditional hope of physicists for a theory of everything having no free parameters. As Albert Einstein said: "What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." In 2002, some proponents of

13158-491: The originators and early developers of the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), referred to the fine-structure constant in these terms: There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e – the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to 0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they like to remember it as

13287-432: The parameters. But second, "as a last resort", humans can convert these predictions into explanations by assuming that there is more than one universe, in fact a large and possibly infinite collection of universes, something that is now called the multiverse ("world ensemble" was Carter's term), in which the parameters (and perhaps the laws of physics) vary across universes. The strong principle then becomes an example of

13416-444: The perturbation theory practical in this case. On the other hand, the large value of the corresponding factors in quantum chromodynamics makes calculations involving the strong nuclear force extremely difficult. In quantum electrodynamics , the more thorough quantum field theory underlying the electromagnetic coupling, the renormalization group dictates how the strength of the electromagnetic interaction grows logarithmically as

13545-553: The plausible paths to a really great future". The book became a New York Times Best Seller and received positive feedback from personalities such as Stephen Hawking , Bill Gates , Elon Musk , Peter Singer and Derek Parfit . It was praised for offering clear and compelling arguments on a neglected yet important topic. It was sometimes criticized for spreading pessimism about the potential of AI, or for focusing on longterm and speculative risks. Some skeptics such as Daniel Dennett or Oren Etzioni contended that superintelligence

13674-532: The precise control of motivation, mood, well-being and personality. According to him, not only machines would be better than humans at working, but they would also undermine the purpose of many leisure activities, providing extreme welfare while challenging the quest for meaning. Bostrom was named in Foreign Policy ' s 2009 list of top global thinkers "for accepting no limits on human potential." Prospect Magazine listed Bostrom in their 2014 list of

13803-484: The present epoch in the Earth's history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!). This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the Sun. At any other epoch, the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around to measure the physical constants in question—so

13932-485: The principle have been accused of discouraging the search for a deeper physical understanding of the universe. Critics of the weak anthropic principle point out that its lack of falsifiability entails that it is non-scientific and therefore inherently not useful. Stronger variants of the anthropic principle which are not tautologies can still make claims considered controversial by some; these would be contingent upon empirical verification. In 1961, Robert Dicke noted that

14061-527: The principle to carbon-based life, rather than just "observers". A more important difference is that they apply the WAP to the fundamental physical constants, such as the fine-structure constant , the number of spacetime dimensions , and the cosmological constant —topics that fall under Carter's SAP. Strong anthropic principle (SAP) (Barrow and Tipler): "The Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history." This looks very similar to Carter's SAP, but unlike

14190-463: The relationship between language and reality by studying the analytic philosopher W. V. Quine . He also did some turns on London's stand-up comedy circuit. In 2000, he was awarded a PhD degree in philosophy from the London School of Economics . His thesis was titled Observational selection effects and probability . He held a teaching position at Yale University from 2000 to 2002, and was

14319-650: The relative strengths of the four fundamental interactions can greatly affect the universe's age, structure, and capacity for life. The phrase "anthropic principle" first appeared in Brandon Carter 's contribution to a 1973 Kraków symposium honouring Copernicus's 500th birthday. Carter, a theoretical astrophysicist, articulated the Anthropic Principle in reaction to the Copernican Principle , which states that humans do not occupy

14448-416: The relevant energy scale increases. The value of the fine-structure constant α is linked to the observed value of this coupling associated with the energy scale of the electron mass : the electron's mass gives a lower bound for this energy scale, because it (and the positron ) is the lightest charged object whose quantum loops can contribute to the running. Therefore, ⁠ 1 / 137.03600  ⁠

14577-437: The rest contributed by a cosmological constant . Steven Weinberg gave an anthropic explanation for this fact: he noted that the cosmological constant has a remarkably low value, some 120 orders of magnitude smaller than the value particle physics predicts (this has been described as the " worst prediction in physics "). However, if the cosmological constant were only several orders of magnitude larger than its observed value,

14706-436: The size of the splitting or fine-structure of the hydrogenic spectral lines . This constant was not seen as significant until Paul Dirac's linear relativistic wave equation in 1928, which gave the exact fine structure formula. With the development of quantum electrodynamics (QED) the significance of α has broadened from a spectroscopic phenomenon to a general coupling constant for the electromagnetic field, determining

14835-436: The standard uncertainty away from its old defined value, with the mean differing from the old value by only 0.13  parts per billion . Historically the value of the reciprocal of the fine-structure constant is often given. The CODATA recommended value is While the value of α can be determined from estimates of the constants that appear in any of its definitions, the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED) provides

14964-418: The statistical uncertainties and best estimate for ⁠ Δ α / α ⁠ stated by Webb et al. and Murphy et al. are robust. Lamoreaux and Torgerson analyzed data from the Oklo natural nuclear fission reactor in 2004, and concluded that α has changed in the past 2 billion years by 45 parts per billion. They claimed that this finding was "probably accurate to within 20%". Accuracy

15093-416: The strength of the interaction between electrons and photons. The term ⁠ α / 2 π ⁠ is engraved on the tombstone of one of the pioneers of QED, Julian Schwinger , referring to his calculation of the anomalous magnetic dipole moment . The CODATA values in the above table are computed by averaging other measurements; they are not independent experiments. Physicists have pondered whether

15222-453: The system of atomic units , which sets e = m e = ħ = 4 πε 0 = 1 , the expression for the fine-structure constant becomes α = 1 c . {\displaystyle \alpha ={\frac {1}{c}}.} The CODATA recommended value of α is This has a relative standard uncertainty of 1.6 × 10 . This value for α gives µ 0 = 4 π × 0.999 999 999 87 (16) × 10  H⋅m , 0.8 times

15351-402: The time variation of alpha does not necessarily rule out time variation in the past. Indeed, some theories that predict a variable fine-structure constant also predict that the value of the fine-structure constant should become practically fixed in its value once the universe enters its current dark energy -dominated epoch. Researchers from Australia have said they had identified a variation of

15480-411: The two telescopes a totally different approach; he looks at the fine-structure constant as a scalar field and claims that if the telescopes are correct and the fine-structure constant varies smoothly over the universe, then the scalar field must have a very small mass. However, previous research has shown that the mass is not likely to be extremely small. Both of these scientists' early criticisms point to

15609-504: The universe as being intelligently designed for life. This perspective challenges the view that our universe is unique in its ability to support life. Nick Bostrom Nick Bostrom ( / ˈ b ɒ s t r əm / BOST -rəm ; Swedish : Niklas Boström [ˈnɪ̌kːlas ˈbûːstrœm] ; born 10 March 1973) is a philosopher known for his work on existential risk , the anthropic principle , human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation , superintelligence risks , and

15738-512: The universe is featureless in this model, to Boltzmann, it is unremarkable that humanity happens to inhabit a Boltzmann universe, as that is the only place where intelligent life could be. Weak anthropic principle (WAP) ( Carter ): "... our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers." For Carter, "location" refers to our location in time as well as space. Strong anthropic principle (SAP) (Carter): "[T]he universe (and hence

15867-403: The universe were 10 times older than it actually is, most stars would be too old to remain on the main sequence and would have turned into white dwarfs , aside from the dimmest red dwarfs , and stable planetary systems would have already come to an end. Thus, Dicke explained the coincidence between large dimensionless numbers constructed from the constants of physics and the age of the universe,

15996-404: The universe would suffer catastrophic inflation , which would preclude the formation of stars, and hence life. The observed values of the dimensionless physical constants (such as the fine-structure constant ) governing the four fundamental interactions are balanced as if fine-tuned to permit the formation of commonly found matter and subsequently the emergence of life. A slight increase in

16125-598: The value of α during the epoch before the formation of the first stars. In principle, this technique provides enough information to measure a variation of 1 part in 10 (4 orders of magnitude better than the current quasar constraints). However, the constraint which can be placed on α is strongly dependent upon effective integration time, going as 1 ⁄ √ t . The European LOFAR radio telescope would only be able to constrain ⁠ Δ α / α ⁠ to about 0.3%. The collecting area required to constrain ⁠ Δ α / α ⁠ to

16254-866: The value to be somewhere between −0.000 0047 and −0.000 0067 . This is a very small value, but the error bars do not actually include zero. This result either indicates that α is not constant or that there is experimental error unaccounted for. In 2004, a smaller study of 23 absorption systems by Chand et al. , using the Very Large Telescope , found no measurable variation: Δ α α e m   =   ( − 0.6 ± 0.6 ) × 10 − 6   . {\displaystyle {\frac {\Delta \alpha }{\alpha _{\mathrm {em} }}}\ =\ \left(-0.6\pm 0.6\right)\times 10^{-6}~.} However, in 2007 simple flaws were identified in

16383-416: The values of the fundamental constants of physics. Roger Penrose explained the weak form as follows: The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the Earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle

16512-440: Was some reason to think that that position was a necessary condition for our existence as observers. Fred Hoyle may have invoked anthropic reasoning to predict an astrophysical phenomenon. He is said to have reasoned, from the prevalence on Earth of life forms whose chemistry was based on carbon-12 nuclei, that there must be an undiscovered resonance in the carbon-12 nucleus facilitating its synthesis in stellar interiors via

16641-408: Was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant , the mass of the proton , the age of the universe , etc.). A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at

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