Anthropic arguments in multiverse cosmology and string theory rely on the weak anthropic principle (WAP). We show that the principle, though ultimately a tautology, is nevertheless ambiguous. It can be reformulated in one of two unambiguous ways, which we refer to as WAP1 and WAP2. We show that WAP2, the version most commonly used in anthropic reasoning, makes no physical predictions unless sup...

Anthropic arguments in multiverse cosmology and string theory rely on the weak anthropic principle (WAP). We show that the principle is fundamentally ambiguous. It can be formulated in one of two ways, which we refer to as WAP1 and WAP2. We show that WAP2, the version most commonly used in anthropic reasoning, makes no physical predictions unless supplemented by a further assumption of “typical...

The place of an anthropic argument in the discrimination between various cosmological models is to be reconsidered following the classic criticisms of Paul C. W. Davies and Frank J. Tipler. Different versions of the anthropic argument against cosmologies involving an infinite series of past events are analyzed and applied to several instructive instances. This is not only of historical signific...

Anthropic reasoning often begins with the premise that we should expect to find ourselves typical among all intelligent observers. However, in the infinite universe predicted by inflation, there are some civilizations which have spread across their galaxies and contain huge numbers of individuals. Unless the proportion of such large civilizations is unreasonably tiny, most observers belong to t...

Sierra Legal is filing this Notice of Objection on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence, and the Canadian Environmental Law Association, pursuant to sections 332(2) and 333 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to the Minister of the Environment, the Hon. John Baird, with respect to the proposed Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers Regulations. The proposed regula...

This paper examines Yilmaz, Ören and Aghaee's outline of present research efforts into the development of simulations that " represent the behavior of active (human) entities in the world. " The paper argues that the Carter-Bostrom formulation of the anthropic principle provides a more functional set of theoretical, and pragmatic proposals to frame the issue of the simulation of human sociocogn...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Conscientious objection to abortion, clinicians' refusal to perform legal abortions because of their religious or moral beliefs, has been the subject of increasing debate among bioethicists, policymakers, and public health advocates in recent years. Conscientious objection policies are intended to balance reproductive rights and clinicians' beliefs. However, in practice...

A general cosmological principle — Aleph — is proposed as a substitute to the Anthropic principle. Furthermore, the universe, conceived as a world ensemble, is characterized by many (possibly infinite) X-Life world principles. The only known X-Life world principle recovers much of the Anthropic conjecture. The inescapable final conclusion is the formulation of the Strong Copernicus principle.

In the absence of a fundamental theory that precisely predicts values for observable parameters, anthropic reasoning attempts to constrain probability distributions over those parameters in order to facilitate the extraction of testable predictions. The utility of this approach has been vigorously debated of late, particularly in light of theories that claim we live in a multiverse, where param...