The anthropic coincidences are widely claimed to provide evidence for intelligent creation in the universe. However, neither data nor theory support this conclusion. No basis exists for assuming that a random universe would not have some kind of life. Calculations of the properties of universes having different physical constants than ours indicate that long-lived stars are not unusual, and thu...

Recent studies have attempted to extrapolate the abundance of life in the universe and the properties of such life from the history of life on Earth. A common “reasonable” assumption in such studies is that the history of life on earth is typical of life in the universe.(1) In this poster we examine the question of whether life on Earth is likely to be typical of life in the universe. In determ...

It was recently shown that the initial mass function (IMF) in the Galactic disk increases monotonically with decreasing mass and is reasonably well described by a power law n(m) ∝ m−αdisk with αdisk ∼ 2±0.5 from ∼ 0.6M⊙ down to the hydrogenburning limit 1). The bimodal IMF with a turn-over around ∼ 0.2M⊙ 2) is shown to be due to unresolved binaries in the photometric luminosity function. In the...

In theories in which different regions of the universe can have different values of the the physical parameters, we would naturally find ourselves in a region which has parameters favorable for life. We explore the range of anthropically allowed values of the mass parameter in the Higgs potential, μ2. For μ2 < 0, the requirement that complex elements be formed suggests that the Higgs vacuum exp...

This paper explores how people make predictions about the future. Statistical approaches to predicting the future are discussed, focussing on the method for predicting the future suggested by J. R. Gott (1993). A generalized Bayesian form of Gott's method is presented, and a speciic psychological model suggested. Three experiments show that the predictions people make about the future are consi...

As Hilbert himself expressed some decades earlier it would be equally desirable to make some progress axiomatizing physics. In some ways this is both an easier and harder problem: easier because one has the real world to guide one’s choice of axioms, harder because, unlike mathematics, it’s not at all clear what physics is. While axiomatizing physics is tricky and barely defined, the lack of a ...

In extracting predictions from theories that describe a multiverse, we face the difficulty that we must assess probability distributions over possible observations, prescribed not just by an underlying theory, but by a theory together with a conditionalization scheme that allows for (anthropic) selection effects. This means we usually need to compare distributions that are consistent with a bro...