The Gods Themselves

"Let us design a Universe, for after all whatever we design must exist, and search for it."

Further proof that if you don't say it, someone else will.

The problem: Our universe is "uncannily suited for life." This leads to an enormous amount of speculation as to why it is so perfectly suited for we seemingly-self aware 'bags of mostly water'.

Aside from the hat tip to Asimov, I'd like to leave the idea of God out of this conversation for the moment. Science shouldn't be driven by the perceived need to rid society of religion and belief in God, as destructive as those things might be.

The solutions discussed in the Discover article focus on the idea that there are many universes. It stands to reason then that we exist only in the one that is suited to us, and this ceases to be a 'miracle' because there are a vast number of other universes out there. Other universes would presumably be identified as such because they have different laws of physics. String theories aim to identify a general construct that would give rise our set of physical laws, as well as those of other universes. "The staggering challenge is to think of a way to confirm the existence of other universes when every conceivable experiment or observation must be confined to our own."

I raise my eyebrow at string theories and this line of inquiry for this reason. Naturally, I shouldn't raise my eyebrow unless I have something else to offer. ;)

We are confined to the limits of our own observations. Efforts like the LHC are attempts to extend the limits of those observations. So is research on the nature and limits of conscious experience. I suggest that adding an additional dimension to conscious experience may also extend our understanding of the ultimate construct of reality (which I half-jokingly call 'the smear').

The problem of why the universe is so adapted to our form of life seems to me to be less pressing for the following reason...

Conscious experience will reflect the circumstances that permit it. Altering the circumstances that give rise to consciousness will alter the experience of consciousness. For example, psychedelic drugs permit the experience of 'universes' that may seem to obey radically different laws of physics, or are incompatible with the rules of the universe as we understand them. No doubt this is why such a trip is often spoken of in terms of having travelled to a different plane/universe/dimension. If our experience of these physical laws can be so easily subverted, then perhaps treating those laws as an absolute and building from there isn't a guarantee for understanding the underlying constructs of our experience of reality.

But saying that only brings into question another problem - the problem of consensus reality. In other words, why can so many of us agree upon what we observe? And why do the rules of our universe stay (for the most part) constant enough to allow us to make very concrete predictions?

For example, does the moon exist when nobody is looking at it? And if it doesn't, then why, upon the resumption of observation, does it return to exact place where it can reliably be predicted to be? You could argue that the moon is never really unobserved. And in fact the moon is much less likely to be unobserved at any particular time than, say, something at the back of your fridge. This idea can be pushed to create a set of testable predictions. Prediction: You are significantly more likely to experience a new observation that is inconsistent with existing memories when the memories in question are the result of observations made by you alone than when the observation has been shared by others. (This prediction could be extended, for example, to say that there may be a linear relationship between the degree of memory consistency with new observations and the number of observers who shared the initial/critical observations.)

Lately I've been doing more thinking about the idea that we are not self-anchoring. That is, the idea that our conscious experience may be shaped in great part by the observations of others.

But that's a topic for another post.