Fine-Tuning and the Goldilocks Universe.

Here are a few of my random thoughts and comments on the topic of the nature of fine-tuning and the resulting Goldilocks Universe.

Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind?

Is the universe fine-tuned with respect to life? Fine-tuning is all well and good and obviously the universe is tuned, even fine-tuned for life to exist, but let's not forget that the cosmos is also very hostile to life, or at least human life, and probably most life of the multicellular variety. There's a lot of tuning of physics and chemistry that has gone on that would not only prohibit life forming in most places but once formed elsewhere, would snuff out that life quicker than you could say "fine-tuning"! As a thought experiment, divide up the entire cosmos into say cubic acre blocks. Number all of those cubic acre blocks. Put all of those numbers into a hat - a very, very large hat obviously. Have the boldly going victim draw out at random one of those numbers with the understanding they will go live for one day, in their birthday suit, in that cubic acre. What are the odds that that victim would select a cubic acre within the cosmos that would make that day a survivable day? The odds are so much against that scenario that only the village idiot (or Clark Kent) would volunteer to be the guinea pig. The odds are close to near certainty that you would end up in the near absolute zero, near absolute vacuum of intergalactic space, or interstellar space, or even interplanetary space, in either scenario zapped by all sorts of deadly radiation to boot. Regardless, you'd be dead before you could bask for a moment on how fine-tuned the cosmos is for allowing you to have existed in the first place. Of course you might end up on, or inside, a black hole; or perhaps you might get a really, really super suntan if you picked a cubic acre that was inside a star. Winding up on Jupiter wouldn't be much better in terms of survivability. Treading water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean isn't your best option either. So, why we can praise and ponder over our fine-tuned universe and how it got that way, we shouldn't ignore the other side of that coin that not all cosmic real estate is a nice as Miami Beach or Tahiti. Finally, a fine-tuned universe will ultimately become a not quite so finely-tuned cosmos when the end times come, be it via a Big Crunch, a Heat Death or the Big Rip.

Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Consciousness?

That consciousness exists means the universe must be fine-tuned enough to allow consciousness to emerge from those basic laws, principles and relationships that rule the cosmic roost. However, consciousness is not inevitable. There was a time in the cosmos when life, hence mind, hence consciousness did not exist, so consciousness did not spring into existence nanoseconds after the Big Bang event. We only have one example in the entirety of the vast cosmos of consciousness existing, so consciousness may well be a fluke. It's hard to extrapolate from a statistical sample of one. There wouldn't appear to be any other form of consciousness anywhere else in our solar system so it's difficult to argue that consciousness is universal or built into the fabric of the cosmos. Just because there is one green apple in a barrel of red apples doesn't mean the barrel was required to contain any green apples.

Why Cosmic Fine-tuning Demands Explanation

One example of fine-tuning I hardly ever see mentioned, far less explained, is that the electric charge on the proton is exactly equal and opposite to that of the electron to as many decimal places as you care to measure. This is more than slightly anomalous in that the proton and the electron share nothing else in common. The proton is not a fundamental particle (it is composed in turn of a trilogy of quarks), but the electron is a fundamental particle. The proton's mass is nearly 2000 times greater than that of the electron. So how come their electric charges are equal and opposite? Why is it so? Who knows! More reasonable but equally mysterious is why the electric charge on the electron is exactly equal and opposite to that of the positron, the positron being the electron's antimatter opposite. That equal but opposite charge is again verified to as many decimal places as you care to calculate. So that means the electric charge on the proton and the electric charge on the positron are exactly the same, yet apart from that the two entities are as alike as chalk and cheese. I'd really like to know the explanation for this electric charge equality between different kinds of particles.

Why Fine-tuning Seems Designed

The apparently fine-tuning of our cosmos which allows for life to come into being, hence survive and thrive, might seem to be intelligently designed for that very purpose. Why? Maybe it is because our cosmos was intelligently designed in order to populate it, but not with really real biological entities, but rather with virtual reality beings. Consider what you would need to do if you were to design and program a computer video game that has various virtual characters within. You would have to intelligently design that game, and fine-tune the software-generated landscape to allow those virtual characters to exist, react and interact in a logical or rational way. It would be a dog's breakfast if you just programmed your video game creation by picking or generating your software bits and bytes by pulling them out of a hat at random. And so, if we are virtual beings in some Supreme Programmer's Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe creation, it should come as no surprise that that simulation, inhabited by our simulated selves (and other life-forms), has been intelligently designed and fine-tuned in order to make it so. Is there any viable terrestrial virtual reality simulation constructed by anyone that could be anything else other than fine-tuned in order to produce the goods it was designed to produce? If so, that programmer is now unemployed!

Is God the Cause of a Fine-Tuned Universe?

God is not the cause of our fine-tuned Universe because IMHO God or any other supernatural deity does not exist, but I do have a variation on the theme which would explain the fine-tuning. That variation is to replace an immortal and infallible supernatural deity with a fallible flesh-and-blood mortal software and computer programmer. Translated, we are virtual beings in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe. Now, if you are going to design a software program(s), that programming will have to be fine-tuned in order to achieve your objective. If you design a medical simulation for medical students to practice their skills on, you had better the bits and pieces right such that the medical students see the simulation as being fine-tuned to perfectly reflect medical reality and thus enable them to practice their skills with confidence. You don't design the medical simulation and place the heart inside the head and have dingo kidneys programmed instead of human ones, etc. People who design our video games fine-tune the software or the program so that the entire gaming scenario is self-consistent not only for the player but also for the virtual characters. So, if some computer nerd designed our Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, he'd be daft not to have fine-tuned it to create a consistent self-contained Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe. But, being fallible, he made a few oops, and those oops translate into many of the anomalies, perhaps also 'miracles' we observe in our virtual reality. What anomalies? Well they are too numerous to mention but they tend to fall into the "It can't be therefore it isn't" versus the "I know what I saw" camp.