Science and the Multiverse

Just one imaginative vision of how the multiverse might 'look'

The de-facto Intelligent Design (ID) community are, in the main, a much nicer bunch of people to get on with (and more intelligent - see William Dembski for example) than the fundamentalist young earthists (for examples of the latter see here, here, here and here). Unfortunately the mutual hate-in that exists between the left of centre evolutionary academic establishment and the academic out-on-a-limb IDists has fueled polarisation which has probably pushed the IDists toward the political right-wing and even into the open arms of that lying demagogue Donald Trump, a man who is quite capable of whipping up suspicion, paranoia, hatred and fear in order to bolster his presidency.^*1

ID doesn't necessarily contradict evolution as top flight IDist William Dembski admits. Conversely, sophisticated atheists like Joe Felsenstein and PZ Myers have effectively  made it clear that evolution  requires a presumed background of transcendent organisation from which to work. (See here, here and here). I therefore see common ground between IDists like Dembski and atheists like Felsenstein and Myers, although of course they would disagree sharply about the ultimate origins of the necessary a priori information needed to drive evolution. Moreover, in these days when fear of the unknown along with tribal, racial, cultural and religious fault lines are exaggerated and exploited by the likes of Donald Trump, Alex Jones and Ken Ham, we are very unlikely to see people unifying around common ground.

The upshot of all this is that I probably automatically find myself on the opposing side to the IDists even though I would agree that the universe only makes sense if we posit complex sentient intelligence as a given (More about that in a later post). As I have explained elsewhere my concept of intelligent creation differs markedly from the IDist's explanatory filter based conclusions. But in spite of this, I am now pleased to announce that I actually agree with something posted by Barry Arrington, the supremo of the Intelligent Design web site Uncommon Descent (This certainly has not always been the case with Barry! See here). In this particular instance Arrington is posting on the subject of the scientific status (or otherwise!) of the multiverse as an explanatory device; his post is entitled The Multiverse is Anti-Scientific.

Unless those many posited universes of the multiverse interact with our own in someway, thereby providing the potential to make testable predictions, I believe Arrington is right to question the scientific status of an otherwise untestable theory. In fact it's arguable that the universes of the multiverse shouldn't interact with our universe by definition and therefore by definition can never be observed!  I suppose, however, it could be argued that if the multiverse is a prediction of an otherwise successfully tested cosmogony then this would be evidence in favour of the multiverse. But then it could be claimed that the theory is being used for an unwarranted and untestable extrapolation into the unknown and should be made more mathematically succinct by recasting the theory so that it did not require the extravagant elaboration of infinite amounts of conjectured reality. In the absence of any interaction with our universe the multiverse is not predictive but only serves as a narrative retrospectively applied in a way which for some people, repeat for some people, constitutes a sense making cosmic myth which is sympathetic to their a priori world view (See this post for more on the epistemic point being made here).

So, without being a genuinely testable science, as Arrinton's colleague Denise O'leary has also pointed out, we are then left judging the content of a multiverse theory purely on the basis of what feels right. But, of course, what feels right will be very subjective and/or worldview sensitive - see here where I did a post on this matter. In the positing of these subliminal universes beyond all detection the subjective deciding factor is, I believe, to do with a sensed need for symmetry: Viz: This symmetry is imposed by generalising the cosmological principle so that each case taken from a very wide range of platonic possibilities is posited as having been reified into a universe. That is, no universe taken from a well defined range of possible universes is specially favoured with reification since a hyper-symmetric uniformity reigns over all conceived possibilities in so far as each of these possibilities is posited as reified. To some people of an atheist persuasion this makes complete and utter sense. But it doesn't make sense to me and neither does it to Arrington; for some people symmetry has no god-like status in the intellectual canon. For others, meaning and purpose trump symmetry when it comes to making sense of the universe, although trying to apply these complex anthropic ideas to cosmology don't readily yield simple mathematical rules.

The sentiment of symmetry would be equally satisfied, if not in actual fact better satisfied, if nothing existed at all! For in such a case all platonic possibilities would be treated equitably in so far as  none of them would have any reality thus avoiding the awkward question of why a very particular cosmos has been singled out for preferential existential treatment. But given the existence of our universe the hi-symmetry fans are faced with the question of why at least something actually exists and, it seems, quite unnecessarily so! That something - namely, our cosmos -  appears to be of a very contingent kind and on the face of it quite unjustifiably favoured for existential status. Now, for some people this special existential status is disquieting and smacks too much of unjustifiable (intelligent) selection. Hence to restore the idea of symmetry and universal mediocrity across the board there is for them only one thing for it; that is, to go to the opposite extreme and posit that every conceivable thing exists; or at least postulate that the probability of existence of every conceivable thing is uniformly smeared across platonic space. Taking this sentiment of symmetry and uniformity to its extreme conclusion we soon find ourselves knocking at the door of Max Tegmark's extravagant mathematical universe: This (unscientific) "theory" posits that every mathematical construction has some kind of existential reification*. It's very tempting to suspect that the underlying motive for proposing such an idea is that it undermines any awkward questions about the apparent contingent asymmetry of our universe, an observation which might lead to the mooting of divine selection and/or intelligent contrivance. After all, in our culture the divine is seen as a personal sentience and therefore (as is the wont of personality) generally having an inscrutable bias toward certain preferences which in turn leads to very particular choices and, accordingly, a very contingent creation. As I have remarked before, intelligent beings have a tendency for bias, interest and focus toward order. (See here and see the epilogue here)

It is very unlikely that even a multiverse is an absolutely random affair: If we were part of a huge multiverse of absolute randomness we would expect our own cosmos to be observably and very rapidly dissolving into disorder a lot faster than is required by the second law of thermodynamics. This dissolution would, of course, eventually kill us off as observers, but there would be a large number of possible scenarios where we would be hanging around long enough to see it happening; these scenarios are much larger in number than the number of possible cases where we have an apparently ordered and stable existence, such as we see in our universe.  Since we don't see this rapid decay happening it follows that it is very likely that even the multiverse, if it exists,  isn't absolutely random and therefore itself has a relatively narrow "symmetry breaking" contingency!

Fundamentalist young earthists often claim that they see the same data as the science establishment but simply have a different worldview and therefore interpret that data according to the fundamentalist worldview with equal plausibility: Not true! Young earthism leads to silly and irrational thinking and also undermines God's creative integrity (See here, for example). However, the  principle "same data, different interpretation" does apply when it comes to the choice between belief in the high symmetry of the multiverse or belief in the specially selected contingency of the observable cosmos. This is because by its very nature the multiverse doesn't readily throw up testable predictions and therefore it is just one way of stitching together a dot-joining myth which for some people makes sense of reality.

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APPENDIX I

If you are a hard core fan of symmetry as a "theory of everything" then there are at least two ways of applying this philosophical prejudice to one's view of the cosmos. The simple way is to do a "Max Tegmark" and simply posit the systematic existence of everything; that is, each mathematically possible world is somehow reified once and once only^*2.

Another way of preserving symmetry is to posit that each and every platonic possibility has an equal probability of existence. But this leaves us with some questions that are not easily answered: What is the value of the probability of the existence of a universe and what theory assigns these probabilities? What is the number of probabilistic trials which have brought the reified universes into existence? What is the size of the set of platonic possibilities from which the trials are taken?  These questions themselves suggest the existence of a particular stochastic model which addresses them and this raises the meta question of why this particular model is favoured for reification.

If universes are being selected at random from a platonic but denumerable set of size T then the probability of the selection of a particular universe will be 1/T; in fact the probability of a cosmos being selected n times will be (1/T)ⁿ. So this probabilistic scenario implies that there is a small chance of a cosmos being selected more than once. Clearly as T goes to infinity the probability of a particular universe making any appearance at all will be infinitesimal. But if the number of trials N goes to infinity as T goes to infinity then the probability of the appearance of a particular universe could be finite, although of indefinite value.

But whether it is intelligible to posit the reality of other universes which neither have observers nor can be observed is, as far as I'm concerned, moot. I have always had positivistic leanings myself and find such an idea  difficult to swallow  But more about that another time.

APPENDIX II

On Symmetry

Footnotes:
*1 See for example this post on Dembski's blog where he identifies with ultra-right winger Tommy Robinson whose book has been banned from various book sellers. He also links to articles on the banning of Milo Yiannopolous from entering Australia and (presumably sympathetically) to Brietbart material on transgender issues and Jacob Wohl. Dembski has been roughly treated by "left wingers" for his ID work so it is no surprise why he finds it easier to identify with these people. So even without me doing anything or even disagreeing with Dembski's core thesis I find myself on the opposite side.

*2 I'm passing over here the considerable conceptual problems Tegmark's proposal raises, not least how to actually define, without self referencing inconsistency, the class of mathematical structures available to his hypothesis.