The Anthropic Principle
Was the Universe made for us? It appears that there is a set of fundamental physical constants that are such that had they been very slightly different, the universe would have been void of intelligent life. It's as if we're balancing on a knife’s edge. Some philosophers and physicists take the 'fine-tuning' of these constants to be an explanandum that cries out for an explanans, but is this the right way to think?
The data we collect about the Universe is filtered not only by our instruments' limitations, but also by the precondition that somebody be there to “have” the data yielded by the instruments (and to build the instruments in the first place). This precondition causes observation selection effects - biases in our data that may call into question how we interpret evidence that the Universe is fine-tuned at all.
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Listen to Nick Bostom talk on the possible existence of life on Mars by clicking on the image below. |
Watch Nick Bostrom's discussions on Closer to Truth, a TV series that discusses Cosmos, Consciousness, and God.  Videos
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Read the full text of Anthropic Bias  |