1. The FT Argument Back to philosophy of religion. Caveat: as I see it, the Fine Tuning Argument is an argument for intelligent design (ID), rather than theism. What’s the difference? ID says that some intelligent being created the universe, or the laws of nature, or at least adjusted very large aspects of the universe and/or the laws. That being may or may not qualify as a “god”. So don’t complain that the FTA doesn’t establish some godlike property or other.
Let A be "There is at least one concious being that's able to question why they exist and why the parameters of the universe are such that allow them to exist"
Let B be the distribution of possible parameters of the universe (if you believe there is any) (including ID existence or not existence as a parameter not independent to all others parameters, I suppose)
Let C be "Parameters of the universe are such that allow conscious beings to exist"
Let D be "ID exists"
Several possible explanations why ap is correct:
First and foremost the question of "why parameters are such as we observe them if the P(A) over B is really small" is a bit of begging the question.
1) If you really believe in the paradigm "Universe parameters are taken out of some distribution which splits by random variable D", your priors shouldn't be updated at all if you observe yourself in the state A, since -> P(C|A) = 1, since A is (C & conscious beings exist) and A is clearly true (you exist).
So now for you to claim that ID exists is to claim that prior to your experience of the universe P(C) over (B|~D) is lower than P(C) over (B|D), which is a meaningless question since there is no way you could've observed the universe prior to observing one.
So, the question of whether ID exists is actually the question not of comparing P(C|(B&D)) with P(C|(B&~D)) but of comparing P(D) with P(~D) , which makes this question straightforwardly meaningless. In other words P(D|(C&A)) over (B|A) vs P(~D|C&A) over (B|A) is actually equal to P(D) vs P(~D).
Not sure I was able to phrase it correctly but it seems like this post is the case about wrong Bayes reasoning being done if you assume that you have some knowledge about universe prior to actually being in that universe.
2) I have to say that you don't actually know whether the distribution from which parameters are taken exists at all, and what the process looks like. I.E it's sorta weird to assume that before this universe was created infinitely-many parameters were taken out of some distribution of UNIVERSE parameters and afterwards the universe was initiated with them taking place. It seems to me like it's just an obscure question since we don't know anything at all about universe parameters distributions. (we only observe one universe).
Re: AP principle probabilistic explanation
Let A be "There is at least one concious being that's able to question why they exist and why the parameters of the universe are such that allow them to exist"
Let B be the distribution of possible parameters of the universe (if you believe there is any) (including ID existence or not existence as a parameter not independent to all others parameters, I suppose)
Let C be "Parameters of the universe are such that allow conscious beings to exist"
Let D be "ID exists"
Several possible explanations why ap is correct:
First and foremost the question of "why parameters are such as we observe them if the P(A) over B is really small" is a bit of begging the question.
1) If you really believe in the paradigm "Universe parameters are taken out of some distribution which splits by random variable D", your priors shouldn't be updated at all if you observe yourself in the state A, since -> P(C|A) = 1, since A is (C & conscious beings exist) and A is clearly true (you exist).
So now for you to claim that ID exists is to claim that prior to your experience of the universe P(C) over (B|~D) is lower than P(C) over (B|D), which is a meaningless question since there is no way you could've observed the universe prior to observing one.
So, the question of whether ID exists is actually the question not of comparing P(C|(B&D)) with P(C|(B&~D)) but of comparing P(D) with P(~D) , which makes this question straightforwardly meaningless. In other words P(D|(C&A)) over (B|A) vs P(~D|C&A) over (B|A) is actually equal to P(D) vs P(~D).
Not sure I was able to phrase it correctly but it seems like this post is the case about wrong Bayes reasoning being done if you assume that you have some knowledge about universe prior to actually being in that universe.
2) I have to say that you don't actually know whether the distribution from which parameters are taken exists at all, and what the process looks like. I.E it's sorta weird to assume that before this universe was created infinitely-many parameters were taken out of some distribution of UNIVERSE parameters and afterwards the universe was initiated with them taking place. It seems to me like it's just an obscure question since we don't know anything at all about universe parameters distributions. (we only observe one universe).