Q&A: Partitioning and the Space of Possibilities – Fine-Tuning
Partitioning and the Space of Possibilities – Fine-Tuning
Question
We know that in many cases, the space of possibilities is limited.
For example, a coin can land in one of two ways, heads or tails. Suppose we flipped a coin and it came up tails. Would anyone be impressed that out of infinitely many possible outcomes, we got דווקא tails? Probably not, because from the outset there were only two possibilities, and this was one of them.
Or take a die, which has 6 possible outcomes: we rolled it and got a 4.
Someone could say, “How, out of millions of numbers in the world, did we get specifically the number 4?” But in practice there weren’t millions of possibilities; I couldn’t have gotten minus 17, I could only get outcomes between 1 and 6. So any result between 1 and 6 is not surprising and not special.
Now I assume that the argument of the fine-tuning proponents is that someone designed the coin or the die so that these would be the possible outcomes.
But what about natural, physical values where the space of possibilities or the probability distribution is not flat?
Spectral lines are produced by energy transitions within atoms (or ions), and they create a very bright line with a wavelength (or color) unique to that transition.
For example, oxygen has spectral lines in green (557 nanometers) and red (630 and 636 nanometers).
These are very specific numbers, but in practice the exact wavelength of each photon emitted in such a line is completely random.
Again, the space of possibilities is infinite. There is a greater-than-zero probability of getting 580 instead of 557 for the green emission.
The important question in such a case is again: what is the distribution function?
Once we understand the distribution function, we are no longer “impressed” that out of infinitely many random values we get specifically certain values.
Now the fine-tuning people will say that these values too were designed by someone—the Creator.
Like the die, so too the physical constants and all the values derived from them. But that is exactly the claim they are trying to prove…
Therefore the fine-tuning argument is circular at its core:
A. I assume there are infinitely many possibilities with a uniform distribution, and if the space of possibilities is limited then someone must have limited it.
B. Special values were obtained (ones that allow evolution).
C. Someone limited or designed those values.
Your first assumption, that the space of possibilities is infinite and if it is finite someone limited it, is begging the question; by the same token you could simply have assumed from the start that there is a designer without arguing anything at all.
Answer
- Your opening is fundamentally mistaken. The problem is not the small number of possibilities. Even if there were a million possible numerical outcomes—for example, a drawing of a number between 1 and a million—you would not be surprised if you got 109,569. The reason is not the number of possibilities, but that the result is not special, and after all, one of those results had to occur. So in such a case we would not be surprised by an ordinary result. But if we got a result like 111,111, I assume some eyebrows would be raised. The reason is not its low probability (because it is the same as the probability of any other result), but its distinctiveness. I have explained here more than once in the past that in this context it is important to distinguish between rare and exceptional. This is exactly the explanation of entropy in statistical mechanics. The ordered and special state has the same probability as any other microscopic state, but it is special, and therefore being in it is low entropy. The result 111,111 is a special result and its entropy is low (like a string of length 7 in which each slot can contain a digit from 0 to 9. A state in which all the slots contain the same number has low entropy).
- I also do not assume any distribution in my argument, uniform or non-uniform. You yourself explained that a distribution would not solve the problem, since then I would ask who created that distribution itself (“distributions all the way down,” as the well-known joke goes). Therefore I am supposed to assume that the beginning occurred without any guiding hand and without any prior information, and the de facto result is like a uniform (flat) distribution, but in a negative sense. I once illustrated this with two different experiments: you have a die that you know is fair. You assume a uniform distribution. Now you have a die about which you have no information at all. What distribution would you assume if you had to bet on the second one? Presumably uniform (in the absence of other information). In the absence of information, we assume a uniform distribution, and if something special turns up, we are impressed—meaning, we assume there was something that produced it. That is exactly the fine-tuning argument.
- Accordingly, you will understand that the issue of spectral lines or cases of a non-flat distribution is irrelevant to the discussion.
- So there is nothing circular here. The claim is that something special (this is determined not by its probability/rarity, but by its distinctiveness/exceptionality; see section 1) requires a cause. An initial cause must underlie every distribution, and therefore distributions are not an alternative explanation. Conclusion: there was someone who created all this.
- Of course, as I have written more than once, every valid logical argument begs the question (begging the question is not a fallacy). So that is something you can always claim against logical arguments, and this argument is no exception.