Yes, you're right, I did not think that footnote through properly.
I'm not clear on exactly what my thoughts were when typing that. I'll elaborate and perhaps one of us will see what I was getting at.
My comment on us holding a priviledged vantage point stems mainly from cosmology; geocentricity was "obvious" until it fell to heliocentricity, ditto to galaxy-centric, etc. At this point cosmology and experiment indicates a flat universe and any notion of the "center" of the universe is simply illusion; we seem to be at the center because light has been coming at us from all directions for 13.7 billion years, so the "edge" looks that far away in all directions. But it's an illusion. We're not in a special place, and thinking that we are simply obscures clear thought on the subject.
Thinking that we were in a special place has always held back cosmology. Only when we let go of the idea that we were living in a priviledged location were we able to see the truth.
As applied to basic physical laws, like what the electron charge is, the ratio of the nuclear forces, etc, then certainly we do hold a priviledged and very specific vantage point. Ditto with what rock we happened to evolve on.
I'd guess that I mixed situations that the anthropic principle DOES apply to (evolution of life, the kind of world we live on, basic physical laws) with ones that they apply much less to (where the "center of the universe" is, etc). I probably just typed that as a general thought on the principle, even though it doesn't apply to the topic under discussion. Sorry for that.
I guess you're talking about the GT "list". It's a private mailing list.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2007-05-24 04:15 pm (UTC)I'm not clear on exactly what my thoughts were when typing that. I'll elaborate and perhaps one of us will see what I was getting at.
My comment on us holding a priviledged vantage point stems mainly from cosmology; geocentricity was "obvious" until it fell to heliocentricity, ditto to galaxy-centric, etc. At this point cosmology and experiment indicates a flat universe and any notion of the "center" of the universe is simply illusion; we seem to be at the center because light has been coming at us from all directions for 13.7 billion years, so the "edge" looks that far away in all directions. But it's an illusion. We're not in a special place, and thinking that we are simply obscures clear thought on the subject.
Thinking that we were in a special place has always held back cosmology. Only when we let go of the idea that we were living in a priviledged location were we able to see the truth.
As applied to basic physical laws, like what the electron charge is, the ratio of the nuclear forces, etc, then certainly we do hold a priviledged and very specific vantage point. Ditto with what rock we happened to evolve on.
I'd guess that I mixed situations that the anthropic principle DOES apply to (evolution of life, the kind of world we live on, basic physical laws) with ones that they apply much less to (where the "center of the universe" is, etc). I probably just typed that as a general thought on the principle, even though it doesn't apply to the topic under discussion. Sorry for that.
I guess you're talking about the GT "list". It's a private mailing list.