[00:00:05] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Brian Miller. We are continuing our conversation with Ellie Feder and Aaron Zimmer on the second season of their podcast, Physics to God. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed two of the premises behind the multiverse theory, which is the focus of the second season. Today we'll be discussing the third premise. So we'll just jump right back into the conversation. What is the third premise of the multiverse of multiverse theories? And why are you focusing on it in the second season of your show?
[00:00:44] Speaker A: So I guess maybe even before I'll just define what the third premise is, but I really have to talk about why we need a third premise. Okay. And to explain the premise is going to take a little bit of work. So just in its raw form, we call it the typical universe premise. And the idea is, is that from the set of all possible universes that contain intelligent observers, our universe is typical.
From the set of all possible universes that contain intelligent observers, our universe is typical. This is sometimes known as the principle of mediocrity. Physicists use that. Okay, now why that's. We're going to have to unpack that slowly. But let's just talk about why do we even need a third premise? The oftentimes the multiverse is just presented with the first two premises, and we call that a naive multiverse because we don't think any physicists really maintain this naive multiverse. Popular presentations often do, but I think they miss the subtleties of the challenges of multiverse and why you need this third premise. So let me just first talk about what's wrong if you only posit the first two premises. Okay, so the first two premises again are. The first one is that there are infinitely many universes. Two is that these are varied, that the constants and the laws and initial conditions, they vary from universe to universe. Okay? And the argument would go is that if there truly is an infinite varied multiverse, then everything is going to happen. Everything is going to happen somewhere. There are infinitely many universes, and the laws and the constants and initial conditions are randomly staggered throughout all these universes. And according to physicists, in such an infinite multiverse, they say this like Alan Goot says, an infinite multiverse, everything that's possible will happen, and it will happen an infinite number of times. So basically, everything happens. There are universes with fire breathing dragons. There are universes with the sea splitting their universe resurrection. There are universes with voices coming out of the sky. There's universes where I'm a basketball player and you're a stock investor and there's everything, every universe. There's universes where they have their videos, where the Statue of Liberty has four, four arms. It's like it's. Well, you're wild. Let your imagination go wild. Everything you could imagine that's possible is another universe in this multiverse. And the idea is, is that if you try to say, why are our constants the way they are? Oh, because in one universe in the multiverse, there has to be one universe that has just the right constants and we happen to be in that universe. That's like the naive version of the multiverse argument. And our argument is that that is a multiverse of the gaps. The idea is, is that using such a multiverse, a naive multiverse, you could explain away anything and everything. For example, imagine you had a voice coming from the heavens. And the voice would say, I am God, I created the universe. I fine tune the fine structure Constant to be 1/137.035999 and so on and so forth. There's no multiverse. It's all make believe. This whole thing is, you know, whatever, whatever the voice you want it to say. If you are a true naive multiverse theorist, you could say, wow, in one universe, in the infinite multiverse, there's going to be one of them that's going to have that voice, a quantum fluctuation of that sound. By chance alone. Apparently we happen to be in that one universe. That's unbelievable. And you could explain that. And the idea is you could explain anything. You could explain life, the origin of all of life. You don't have to have a theory of evolution. You could just say there was a quantum fluctuation of our entire universe, everything just the way it is at this moment. You don't need, you don't need evolution, you don't need any science. Any problem you ever have, you could always explain and just say, is there one universe that's going to happen to have that configuration? And the experimental result, you say, well, we happen to be in the universe where that happens. And that's the idea, is that a true naive multiverse can explain anything and everything. And as such, that doesn't explain anything at all. So to just have a naive multiverse that doesn't really explain our constants because it explains everything. And that's not really an explanation. To get around that problem, you have to come to the third premise, which is the typical universe premise, so maybe I get from here.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: Okay, so, so the typical universe premise is if you step back and you, most people don't realize, you think a multiverse doesn't make any predictions. That's why people say it's not scientific, but it really does make one prediction. Okay. It's not a classic prediction, this sense of normal science where it's, we can, wow, I made a real prediction. Let's go out and test it and let's see if it's true or not. No, it doesn't quite do that, but it predicts that we would be the typical observer in the typical universe. So if you can imagine, look, all the infinite number of universes which don't have intelligent observers, of course we couldn't observe a universe like that because they have no intelligent observers in them. Nobody could observe them. So of course that makes sense why we don't see a universe without intelligent observers. That's impossible. But now there's an infinite number of universes that do have intelligent observers. And if you're going to explain our observation, the world we see through an observer bias.
So now you would think that we would find ourselves in the universe which is most typical or very typical, that has not a universe which is extremely rare. So like Ellie was saying, if there are multiverse, scientists agree there are universes with intelligent observers and fire breathing dragons. But, but a multiverse would not predict that we would find ourselves to be in a universe with fire breathing dragons because they're rare, they're unlikely. But you would say the most typical in theory, the most typical universe would be one with intelligent observers and without dragons. And therefore it would, it doesn't explain. Multiverse doesn't explain anything. It only explains the typical universe. And what, what, what? It's another type of a prediction that we should observe what the standard typical universe should be.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: And voice, like the voice. We wouldn't predict the voice.
[00:06:56] Speaker C: Yeah, you're not going to predict a voice that comes down from heaven and denies multiple universe. And therefore it's a, it's a type of a prediction which you can test out and you could take a look around and say, is our universe typical? Is this the kind of universe that we would expect to find ourselves in? If there really are an infinite number of universes where everything happens and there's intelligent observers and infinite number of universal intelligent observers, some have dragons, some don't, what do we expect to find ourselves in a universe like our own? And that's a type of prediction which you can test out is it True? Is it false?
And that's why we. Which is so it's. It's surprising. It avoids the naive multiverse problem because it can't explain everything. And it kind of lets you test out multiverse, ostensibly, is it true or false? And when you try to do that, you know, when you try to try to test out, is it true or false, you end up. It seemingly is false. And that's where really, that's what, you know, we develop as that. As the two problems. The Boltzmann brain problem, the grand universe problem.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I've heard about the Boltzmann brain problem before, which was. Which was really intriguing. Could you flesh that out some?
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So again, just to. Just to add on or to summarize that Aaron's point about why we need the typical universe, the idea is that multiverse is trying to explain the universe we observe by chance. And the idea is that there are infinitely many universes, and we just happen to be in. In the. In our universe. But if you're trying to say that our universe is the result of this grand lottery, then the chance you have to be in a universe, which you would expect to find, assuming you would just happen to be in a universe. So of course, we expect to find ourselves in a universe of intelligent observers. But is our universe special? Does it have much more that we wouldn't expect, or are we the typical observer in the typical intelligent observer in this grand multiverse? And that's. That's the question. Is our universe special, or are we the typical observers in an infinite multiverse? And the idea of the Boltzmann brain problem is basically a suggestion, is this is thought of by. By Ludwig boltzmann back in 1895.
The argument. Yeah. Against Boltzmann's multiverse. So the idea is, is that if you truly were in an infinite multiverse, where everything possible happens. So the question is, what would be the most likely way to get my brain. Okay. What would be the most likely way to get. To get me thinking right now that I'm in this room and. And all that. So one way for that to happen is for there to have been a Big Bang and for everything to have unfolded, the unlikely probability of the whole universe unfolding and resulting in what we have here today, again, the highly ordered Big Bang, or the other way is that really there's just a chaotic universe with a bunch of particles floating around and they happen to coalesce, and it's quantum fluctuation to result in a disembodied brain. Exactly. The Configuration exactly as my brain is at this very moment. And the odds of. You do the math and with entropy and the calculations, the odds of getting just a brain, what's known as a Boltzmann brain, or a freaky observer, as it's sometimes known, the odds of that is much, much higher than getting our entire universe, getting the Big Bang in our entire universe. It's so much more order and so much more unlikely. And therefore they are. The paradox says, is that if you really believe that there's an infinite multiverse, then you're going to predict that we are a typical observer. And a typical observer is going to be one of these Boltzmann brands. And that's a problem that leads you. There's a very. That's a problem because if it's believing in the multiverse is going to predict that we are a Boltzmann brain. But the problem is, if we really are a Boltzman brain, then all of our scientific theories are. Are garbage.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: And also, you just don't want to be a Boltzmann brain.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't want to.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Nobody wants to be a Boltzmann brain.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Right, Exactly. So the idea is that we're not. The argument is we're not really a typical UN observer in the infinite multiverse. The typical observer in infinite multiverse is a Boltzmann brain. Much, many, many, many, many, many more of these ultimate brains. And there are what they call regular observers or normal observers than people like us. That's one problem. The other problem is that in order to the typical universe, our universe doesn't just have us, and it doesn't just have Earth, and it doesn't just have our solar system. We really exist in that there's 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and there are 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each. And the idea is, is that the typical universe, the typical observer in an infinite multiverse, you wouldn't expect him to have such a grand universe. Why do we have so much more order and structure beyond our own universe? If we're really saying that we are just chance alone and the observer bias is explaining how we exist, it doesn't explain all of the grand universe in which we find ourselves. Our universe seems to be far from typical. And because, because multiverse makes a prediction that we are a typical observer, it turns out that it seems to be falsified by the Boltzmann brain problem and by the grand universe problem. Those seem to indicate that typically observer is something very different than us.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: That's like an irony that happens with multiverse, they often say the anthropic principle, which is based upon mankind, anthros, it's based upon humans. So there's a certain irony that used to be scientists, generations prior, you know, they would attack religious people and say, you're making everything about man, everything is about, you know, people, mankind. And it's the whole universe is for you. And that's, you know, just, you know, the Feynman's classic quote of the stage is too big for the drama. And now it comes out because of this, the multiverse. They have to maintain that, yes, there's a hundred billion galaxies out there, but the most typical way of getting a human being is, is by having hundreds of billions of galaxies. And in a certain sense, it's not that the universe is designed for humans. You know, God forbid that they would say something like that, but it's that, that in order to get human beings, you need hundreds of billions of galaxies. I mean, it does, you know, as opposed to, if you believe in an intelligent cause for the universe, you don't have to say everything is made exclusively for mankind. So, so it's, it's like an interesting irony and twist in history is that multiverse scientists are now having to use an anthropic argument and the whole universe is there in order to explain how you get one human being who can observe the universe and go, I wonder why it's fine tuned. So it's just an interesting twist of history.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: That's really amazing. So traditional fine tuning arguments were stating that, well, if you look at the laws of nature, they seem to have been designed with a purpose for life. But what you're saying is even more is that even if you look at all possible universes that could support life, our universe is very, very, very special even in that ensemble. That's a very powerful argument. Now how have cosmologists tried to address this measure problem? And why do they even call it the measure problem?
[00:13:56] Speaker C: Okay, so we'll take a step back now. The measure problem is really is a response to the Boltzmann brain solution, or the question on them is. So it's not, it's much worse than we presented. This is not even the problem with multiverse, the Boltzman brain and the grand universe. It's so much deeper and so much worse. Because if you think about an infinite multiverse, there aren't just an infinite number of every possible types of universes, there's an infinite number of copies of every single type of universe. So our universe. Exactly. There's an infinite number of duplicates of it. And when you have an infinite number of duplicates and copies of every single kind of universe, it's impossible to actually say which one of them is typical, because there's an infinite number of every single type. And when you're comparing infinities, it's impossible to take probabilities in any straightforward way.
So it doesn't even make a prediction. It doesn't even make really, really. When you get down to it, multiverse doesn't even on its own make a false prediction. It makes no prediction, in which case it becomes like the naive multiverse that we were talking about in the beginning. And the only way that you can get any prediction out of multiverse is by introducing these things called measures. Measures are an external ad hoc constraint that you place onto the multiverse. It's a metal law that says that certain kinds of universes are more probable than others, and that allows there's different possible measures you can try out. The measure doesn't emerge from eternal inflation or string theory or any other natural law of nature. It's some external thing that a multiverse scientist comes up with. And they place this measure on the multiverse. And they say if this is the measure that governs the entire multiverse and tells me which universes are more probable or not, then I could try to see, given this measure, are we living in a typical universe? And they try out different measures in order to say that we are probably not Boltzmann brains, we're probably normal observers. And that's essentially the method they use measures in order to solve the Boltzmann beam problem, the grand universe problem. They're trying to find a measure that would say that we are typical observers in the typical universe.
But. But of course, the introduction of measures carries its own problems, which is ultimately undermines the entire multiverse. And we call that the three layers of the measure problem.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Right? So basically the three layers of the measure problem. The first thing is the whole idea of introducing meas measures is an ad hoc addition. There's nothing about any theory of physics that says there's such a thing as measures. Assuming you posit, even if you want to posit eternal inflation predicts an infinite number of universes. There's nothing to say that there's any way to weight these and to put a measure on them. And what really just happens, you've got infinitely many universes where anything and everything happens. And you're stuck in naive multiverse, which is basically false prey to the multiverse of the gaps. And it's true that physicists want to posit a measure because it's what allows them to make do do any science and to explain anything and not everything. But that doesn't mean it's true. They're just making up the whole idea there is such a thing as a measure. But they'll say that's one problem. The second problem is when physicists posit measures, they've been trying for decades to find a measure which will make our universe typical. They try to tame the Boltzmann brains or something to that effect. The freaky observers, they try to lower. They try to find the measure which will have less freaky observers and we will be normal observers, will be more likely, more probable. We'll be a typical observer. And the idea is that all the measures that they've tried to date don't work out. Basically all the measures which they have result in the fact that Boltzmann brains are much more likely than us or.
[00:17:46] Speaker C: Other types of problems.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Or other types of problems.
[00:17:48] Speaker C: And they've been doing this for decades, decades. And dozens of measures have been tried and they had none of them work right.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: So the whole thing, the whole idea of introducing a measure is an ad hoc thing. And then even when they try it, it hasn't worked. And their hope is that they're going to still keep looking and they're trying to play around with all the mathematics to try to work out a measure which will work. And this is the third layer of the problem, is that even if one day these intelligent multiverse scientists find exactly the right measure which yields that our unbelievable, amazing, ordered, structured universe is going to be the typical universe in the infinite multiverse you have. The problem is what fine tuned this measure, what design this measure. We've got all these other measures out there which are possible, and we happen to be, our grand multiverse happens to be governed by the one measure which is not an intuitive measure, but it's the measure which yields our, which causes our universe to be the typical universe that itself hasn't explained fine tuning. You're just pushing the fine tuning back from fine tuning reconstants and the design of our laws to being the fine tune and design of the measure which is responsible for selecting our, the likelihood the typical universe in our infinite multiverse.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: That's really, that is a very profound and very, very clever argument. Now, what is the takeaway like? As people go through your podcast, they hear these arguments, they believe them. What is the implications you want them to gain from this argument?
[00:19:16] Speaker C: You know, we go through this slowly and clearly, Ellie uses analogies. And we want them to realize that there's really nothing new that we're saying all the things we've said in season one, what we're going to be saying in season two, we quote atheists, multiverse scientists for all these things. The measure problem, the multiverse scientists know about this problem. They've been dealing with it for decades and they just have the hope that one day they'll solve it and they'll be able to explain fine tuning. And the reason why I want people to realize that the reason multiverse scientists are still looking for a measure and they still believe in infinite number of unobservable universes, when really the whole multiverse, it goes against the spirit and the soul of science. What is going on. And it's all really based on this premise that God is impossible. And if you believe that there's just simply the whole idea of God makes no sense. It's illogical. Because what caused God? What does God even mean? Who, who designed the designer, who fine tuned the fine tuner? And all these series of questions. If you don't know how to answer that problem of what God means and multiverse scientists believe you can't answer these questions, then there really is no other solution than this multiverse. And looking around for measure for decades, that's going to be fine tuned anyway. I just want people to realize we're not coming up with anything, we're just presenting it in a certain way. But ultimately the multiverse is simply, it's the last attempt that ultimately just simply fails miserably even in the framework of multiverse scientists themselves. And it's really based, the only really thing motivating multiverse scientists at the end of the day is the fact that they really see no other possibility.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: So it sounds like the clear interpretation of the evidence is there's a creator, you see purpose, you see design. But from what you're saying, it sounds like many scientists are absolutely unwilling to consider that possibility. So they're willing to follow a path that essentially leads to the collapse of science itself. Is that a fair statement?
[00:21:08] Speaker C: Yeah, it totally really does undermine the spirit, you know, the heart of science. And that's why, look, we do appreciate the problem that they have with God and that's why we're doing season two now. But we're going to do a season three where we explain the idea of God in logical, rational, philosophical terms using the same categories that physicists use for fundamental physics, using those as analogies, by show that when you transfer those categories to deal with the fundamental existence, the one simple fundamental existence that's the source of everything else, that it really becomes something you can understand about the idea of God and how God acts. And it becomes a satisfying idea to the mind. And you just have to understand the proper categories and the appropriate categories, just like scientists do when they're dealing with electrons and fundamental laws. These are the same categories to use when you're dealing with God. And we're going to have a whole season in a rigorous, slow manner using analogies that's going to explain the idea of God also, because that really completes the argument. And without that, you're left with multiverse, which undermines all of science. And I personally, I don't really think scientists want to believe in the multiverse. They're just like, left with it because they see no other hope, there's no other possibility.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Well, I've been very impressed with your arguments, with the way you present them. And one thing that's I think really significant, and this gets to my last question, is what has allowed you to present such clear, profound and interconnected arguments? Because in a private conversation you mentioned that your scientific training did not actually train you how to think as a scientist, but you had to learn those skills someplace else. Could you talk about what prepared you to make these arguments?
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Sure.
So, as I mentioned at the beginning, Aaron and I have been studying Talmud our entire lives and we've been study partners, we call it in Hebrew, chavrusa. We've been study partners for more than 20 years. And daily we analyze various sections of the Talmud and legal constructs within the Talmud. And this methodology, called the Brisker methodology, which we've studied with, has really trained us how to think, how to think categorically, conceptually, how to analyze different areas of all different areas of life. And it really has given us again, I went through, I have a math PhD and my training in math. I learned math, but I didn't really learn how to think. Aaron learned physics, but didn't teach you how to think. And really, Talmud is structured in a way. Every page of the Talmud is, consists of lots of complex sets of facts and patterns of different sets of laws and the way to truly understand it. The methodology of learning Talmud involves all different difficult, I guess, categories of thinking. Whoops. Categories of thinking and different patterns of thinking and skills and methodology of thinking and asking questions. And because we've had so much experience learning together, studying the Talmud, when we came to this area of fine tuning, when Aryan discovered this 15 years ago and we started dissecting it and analyzing it and questioning it is very similar. The way we analyze, we. We see it is that God created, I guess, two things amongst many. He created his unbelievable universe and all of his wisdom which is implanted in his universe. And he also created the Torah, which includes the, you know, the, you know, the, the Bible, and it also includes the oral law, which is the Talmud. And that his wisdom is manifest. We could see the wisdom of God in the Torah which He gave us and in the Talmud. And also when we study physics and therefore our sessions where we discuss physics, we're using the same tools and methodology of thinking which we use to study the Talmud. And when we teach Talmud, when I teach Talmud daily, I'm teaching students how to think based upon the skills which I've learned from Talmud. And that those same skills, the same methodology of breaking down arguments and spelling out all the steps and questioning all the premises and all that is exactly what we do in physics to God. And there's really, it's like we feel like that we are well prepared to be able to study God's universe by studying God's Torah.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: Thank you. That was a wonderful conversation. And you two are a real inspiration, one, because you came up or you presented a very powerful argument for why we see design in the universe. And two, you've been a model of what it looks like to really train your minds to think well, to help understand the world around us. So I greatly appreciate your being part of our podcast now for our listeners, I strongly encourage you to listen to both seasons and to the third season when it comes out of their podcast. And if you want to go to their podcast, you can go to physicstogod.com that's physicstogod.com and I think you'll be extremely encouraged by what you hear for ID the Future. I'm Brian Miller. Thanks for listening.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org this program is.
[00:26:21] Speaker C: Copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Center for Science and Culture.
