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From: aishdas@sbcm10.sbcm.com (Micha Berger)
Subject: Re: Anthropic "Principle" (was Re: An erroneous tale)
In-Reply-To: sarfatti@ix.netcom.com's message of 7 Feb 1995 09: 43:26 GMT
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Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 19:00:27 GMT
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sarfatti writes:
> I should have added the essential point, pointed out to me by an 
> astronomer in email just received, without that Rube Goldberg triad of
> "meaningless random coincidences" in stability of Be and the two nuclear
> resonances - there would be no heavy elements at all!!!!!

My personal favorite is a coincidence that involves no constants, and
therefor would be true no matter how symmetry broke. This one's from
The Emperor's New Mind.

Had the universe started in a high entropy state, all of history would
be boring. The universe started with very little entropy, which is why
we can have all of these reactions that make the universe interesting.
However, by definition, low entropy conditions are unlikely. Penrose
estimates the odds of the big bang starting things off with little
entropy (based on a current guess of the number of protons) as
1:10^10^123.

But no matter what the actual odds turn out to be, by definition of
"entropy" they must be negligably low.
--
Micha Berger                     Help free Ron Arad, held by Syria 3035 days!
berger@sbcm.com  212 224-4937             (16-Oct-86 - 9 -Feb-95)
aishdas@iia.org  201 916-0287
<a href=http://www.iia.org/~aishdas>AishDas Society's Home Page</a>
