The Lottery Fallacy Fallacy

So are you saying that those who point to a “Lottery Fallacy” are setting up a false scenario where there MUST be a winner, when in reality it’s a one ticket Lottery?

The lottery analogy makes sense only if you assume some variation of the “many-worlds” view of reality (note: I know very little about this, so I’ll probably misrepresent it). If there are an indefinite number of universes that DO exist, then it’s not miraculous that we find ourselves on the only one that supports life. To use the marble analogy, if ALL the marbles are picked, and only the black one contains self-aware beings (OK, this analogy is breaking down), the self-aware beings should not be at all surprised to find themselves on the one black marble out of a zillion white marbles.
That said, I don’t believe in an infinite number of universes, and I find the teleological argument for God pretty convincing.

Regarding the wealth of so-called “anthropic coincidences,” Lennox writes:

Some scientists and philosophers maintain that we ought not to be surprised at the order and fine-tuning we see in the universe around us, since if it did not exist then carbon-based life would be impossible, and we would not be there to observe the fine-tuning. In other words they use the anthropic principle against the inference of design. However, as philosopher John Leslie points out, “that sounds like arguing that if you faced a firing squad with fifty guns trained on you, you should not be surprised to find that you were alive after they had fired. After all, that is the only outcome you could possibly have observed
— if one bullet had hit you, you would be dead. However, you might still feel that there is something which very much needs explanation; namely why did they all miss? Was it by deliberate design?

According to Leslie, the only way to avoid a theistic conclusion is to believe in some “multiverse” hypothesis. Here Swinburne has the right answer: “To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality.” (Lennox, God’s Undertaker, p. 73)

Yes, this one just will not die. It’s often expressed as “There is nothing to be explained – improbable things happen every day!”

For example – what are the chances that there would be that exact number of bubbles in my cappuccino foam?

I think the poker analogy could be a good rebuttal. If I played poker with an atheist and got a royal flush every single time, we could expect the atheist to suspect ‘tinkering’. Would the atheist accept it if he were told “You’re committing the Lottery Fallacy! This arrangement of cards is equally probably with any other arrangement of cards, so there is really nothing to be explained here!”

There is another issue which I think is interesting… the idea that there is a stage at which improbabilities functionally become impossibilities. For example, it seems to me that if you were to repeatedly roll a trillion dice, you would NEVER get all sixes. Ever. The monkeys never type Hamlet. How do those probabilities compare to those relevant to fine tuning?

An important question in these teleological arguments, perhaps the most important, is how we define “specificity”/”specified”. I agree it is reasonable to see ‘life-permitting’ as a specified trait of the universe, i.e. it corresponds to an identifiable pattern, but the hard-core sceptic will perhaps say that we are unduly privileging life/consciousness over non-life/consciousness. This is done in the marble illustration by making one black (obviously unique) – perhaps the other marbles could be considered various different colours, not just white. The fine tuning argument may not be effective for someone convinced that (human) life is of absolutely no more consequence/significance than the various alternative universes. (I wonder if such a sceptical position is somehow self-refuting as well, but that’s a dif issue.)

“I’d be pleased to hear of an explanation to the contrary”

Woland’s cat, I think what would be needed first is a good explanation of why we should accept the claim that the constants in the universe couldn’t be anything other than what they are. Failing that, no explanation of the contrary claim is needed. Prima facie, there’s no need to deny that they could have been different.

I fear you have not understood the question Ropata. I was asking what reason we have to believe that the ‘constants’ we have measured are in any way ‘variable’. i.e. what leads you to believe they even can be anything else? Not how accurately we have measured them or whether we will find uniting theories.

‘Dubiously’ worded? Please explain.

Glenn, all we have experienced or seen evidence of is that the constants are the way they are. Unless there is evidence to the contrary then parsimony requires that it is not me who needs come up with an explanation as to why your evidence-free hypothesis should be dismissed because all I have to claim is that it is evidence-free.

So far I’ve not heard a single reason to suggest that the properties we observe in the universe can be tweaked like the knobs on a mixing desk or arranged at random in big-bang-like events.

I’m interested; do you believe that it is also possible that absolute zero (merely a number we’ve chosen at which all atomic movement stops) could be anything other than what it is? Can that temperature be colder in ‘another universe’ than it is here? Surely you see how silly this sounds. It is silly because ‘atoms-not-moving’ isn’t really a number; it’s a physical observation where the unit used to measure it is a product of the description. The same holds for ‘bodies-attracting’. Gravity isn’t really a number; it’s a physical observation. The only problem is that the units we use don’t appear at this stage to be directly correlated and/or break down at the extremes (which suggests we are missing some important underlying force or factor) but, as Ropata helpfully pointed out, if a unifying theory is found then this really will be the same as asking whether ‘other universes’ could possibly have different values for absolute zero.

Everything that follows from an assumption that physical constants might be variable will depend on there being a reason to believe that things can be this way in the first place. When you discuss the lottery fallacy fallacy I have to ask both proponents of the fallacy and of the fallacy fallacy what reason they have to imagine that the constants are variable. Otherwise it is likely to be pure fantasy.

Glenn, you said,

And to affirm that such would have been impossible needs reasons in order to be accepted

Please don’t put words in my mouth. I’ve not said it is impossible. Simply that I’ve not been presented with any positive evidence. I was hoping for someone — anyone — to come up with some form of evidence that might lead me to believe that there might be the slightest bit of merit to discussing probabilities in a reality where ‘constants’ are actually ‘variable’ because I’ve been perplexed by this for some time. If you don’t really know the answer, just say so.

However, if there are any physicists reading this and you know of some reason to believe this is the case that our universe (in the truest sense: all of reality, not just a bubble of it) might well have variable ‘constants’ then please feel free to chime in. I’m more than willing to be persuaded and I have absolutely no reason to dogmatically hold to one position or the other. Apart from evidence or a lack thereof.

Also, I would like to point out that it was you that said,

The fine tuning argument starts with the fact, readily admitted by the scientific community, that the existence of a life-sustaining universe depends on an incredibly precise balance of many variables.

You weren’t dabbling in mere possibilities there and so it seemed entirely reasonable to ask where these ‘facts’ came from and what evidence was there to support them.

“I’ve not said it is impossible.”

Well unless something is impossible, then it’s possible. So if you’re not saying that it’s impossible, then what are you saying?

Remember, things are possible unless they are impossible. People are entitled to help themselves to something’s possibility unless and until there are reasons for those possibilities being deemed off-limits. There’s no merit in wondering “but what if it’s impossible.” If you have no horse in the race and don’t want to be dogmatic about it, then you’ve no objection to the thought that whatever hasn’t been shown to be impossible should be regarded as possible.

I think when people cite the lottery fallacy in this case they are actually saying life, or at least life as we know it, isn’t all that interesting from a cosmic stand point. Perhaps other configurations of the so called “free parameters” of the universe would have created equally unlikely physical phenomena, but if they had been that way there would be no reason to believe the universe was designed to allow them to occur.

I don’t think that’s a satisfying answer, but it’s not a fallacy either.

Um, how are positions in space constants? I suppose in the sense that they vary constantly – but that’s not the definition of a constant. Earth is in the Goldilocks position in the Milky Way – not too close to the center, not too far from the center but just the right spot relative to the center. Planetary position is anything but constant. So why is it so difficult to conceive of a different condition where Earth was too close or too far? Some of the supports for fine tuning are related to constants but some are not.

I think the issue with fine tuning is more one of tolerances. It’s not so much that any given constant might have been different but the huge improbability of so many falling within such tiny tolerances where only infinitesimal differences would have destroyed the system. Improbable in any one event it strains credulity when so many improbable events stack up. Life has incredibly tight tolerances relative to the universe’s massive number of conditions. That all necessary conditions within those tolerances are met despite the ludicrous degree of improbability is at the very least worthy of serious investigation.

Oh, and the chance of the lottery being won is never 100% unless 100% of the possible numbers are bought. That doesn’t usually occur – except when done deliberately by a consortia when the value of the lottery prize is sufficiently high to make the expense of the tickets and hiring the buyers worth it. Otherwise, a lottery that is completely sold out is exceedingly improbable.

One of the reasons lotteries roll over is because it is so rare for them to be sold out – the other is that the winner fails to come forward which, oddly enough, happens more frequently than seems probable.

The only way the lottery analogy works is if a consortia is involved – which kinda supports the theist rather than the atheist position…

Congratulations for missing the point so comprehensively Ilion.

Stephen, recall that I added:

Now it’s true that Law did use the word “allegedly” here, thus not committing to the claim that the lottery fallacy is being committed. But the refutation of this criticism is not mentioned at all, leaving the impression that this thinking tool should dissuade us from embracing the fine tuning argument.

So I actually acknowledged what you’re now pointing out, and I added that it looks to me like you’re treating the objection favorably. I think that was a fair assessment.

Although I am not particularly interested in defending the way I presented this argument 10 years ago, the “lottery fallacy fallacy” seems to be basically correct. It is not the final step in the discussion, to be sure, but it is a vital one.

Step 1: the proponent of the anthropic principle tells us that our Universe is so unlikely that it is entirely reasonable to believe it to have been fine-tuned by an intelligence interested in the existence of life.
Step 2: the opponent of the anthropic principle states that the proponent is committing the lottery fallacy.
Step 3: the proponent adjusts or specifies his argument by telling something like the white marbles / black marble story that Glenn has given us in his opening post.
Step 4: the opponent shows why this argument doesn’t work.

It is of course possible to start at step 3; but if the discussion doesn’t start there, and it often doesn’t, step 2 is a good step to make. It’s not a fallacy if used as a counter-argument to step 1, though it would of course be a fallacy when used against step 3.

Given that step 1, 2 and 3 have already been discussed in this thread, perhaps it is time to take step 4. The story about the white marbles / black marble is unconvincing because it falsely assumes that among all the possible universes, there is one special universe and a huge, huge number of non-special universes. (Actually nobody claims that there is one special universe, because nobody believes that there is only a single possible universe with life. But let’s follow the analogy and ignore the difference between “one” and “a small part of the entire set”.)

Why is this assumption false? All the possible Universes are different from each other, and this means that each one of them will have certain properties that are very rare in the entire set. Some of them contain carbon-based life forms, some have purely deterministic laws, some contain only cubical objects, some spontaneously generate the complete works of William Shakespeare in a supernova explosion, some end after exactly fifteen seconds, and most of them will have properties so different from anything found in our universe that we do not even have the concepts to describe them. Every possible universe will be special in some way, perhaps even in an infinite number of ways.

The fact that someone is able to point out one aspect in which the actual universe is special is thus hardly a proof that it must have been brought about by an intelligence interested in that special property.

But hasn’t this objection already been dealt with in the thread? Andre already came up with the idea that perhaps the universes all have different colours, in which case taking the black one wouldn’t be “special”. Glenn and James responded to this by claiming that such an argument would work for continuous variables, but not for binary properties: in the case of a binary property, there is only black and white.

But Glenn’s and James’s counterargument is flawed, and my story about every possible universe being special works just as well when we limit ourselves to binary properties. Every possible universe has binary properties in which it differs from the vast majority of other possible universes. To come back to our swimming pool: if we are wearing “life vs non-life” glasses, one ball will be black and the rest will be white; but if we are wearing “only cubic objects vs also other objects” glasses, it’s another marble that will appear to be black; if we are wearing our “pure determinism vs indeterminism” glasses yet another marble will appear to be black; and so on (and I would like to stress again that most glasses will be so bizarre and unexpected that we cannot even conceptualise them). For every marble, there will be a binary property such that it and only it will be black.

If this is granted (and I for one don’t see a way around it), the simple conclusion would seem to be that since every universe is a black marble considered through the glasses of some binary property, the fact that our universe is a black marble considered through the glasses of some binary property does not need to be explained. It is a logical necessity.

In order to rescue the anthropic argument, one would somehow have to show that the “life vs no life” property is more special than all (or at least most of) the other properties. But how could one do that, given that (a) we would need a non-probabilistic conception of “special” here; and that (b) we have the entire space of possibilities to compare it with?

Victor, I consider that your objection is already addressed by the way that I earlier pointed out that the option really is a binary one: Life permitting or not. There are not many shades of colour, only two, since these are the two outcomes of the universe in consideration.

If this is the property we are thinking of, then we still have one black marble and billions of white ones, and every outcome is clearly not as likely as any other. One does not have to show that there is anything special about the black marble (or the life vs. non life issue) beyond this.

This has already been sufficiently explained and nothing further is needed.

“Of course — but my point is that for every possible Universe, there is a property such that if we are thinking of _that_ property, the Universe in question will appear as the single black marble between billions of white ones.”

Well, if that one property is in fact not one property but a combination of a really huge number of properties which, are astronomically unlikely to all occur together in the right combination, then this response really doesn’t connect.

See it’s not just one property like blueness or wetness. That’s not what generates this fine tuning argument.

Excuse me for being a bit thick, but where and why did the fine tuning stop ?

What were the odds that you’d write this blog post? (from the simple perspective of your existence at all — that you’d exist this way?!)

The marble example is most uninteresting.

We could, for an incredible amount of scenarios, simulate your marble example.

For example: Your life as a storybook(every unique moment in the arrangement that occurred) as represented by a unique marble. (amidst a sea of all other possible storybooks for life’s unfolding) We can define lots of unique marbles.

So why aren’t you dumbfounded by your storybook? These are incomprehensible odds, that you see the story you do? Is this some intelligent plan?

Of course not. Obviously one event led to another and another and the story, as unlikely as it may have been, was carved out.

My point: we’re surrounded by — if we create the right sort of query — innumerable unlikely occurrences (incredible odds) that we don’t think twice about.

Lets not get hung up on “incredible occurrences.” That’s not much of an argument.

Apparently, since we exist, events led to us existing. All we can endeavor to do is understanding what these events were.

So you could use a lottery type argument there, that it’s another incredible occurrence (if we frame the query a certain way) that doesn’t need divine explanation.

We’ve observed what we’ve observed. Perhaps we’re observing a lotto winner, from a certain perspective. So what.