Talk:String theory landscape
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"the idea that fundamental constants may have the values they have not for fundamental physical reasons, but rather because such values are necessary for life (and hence intelligent observers to measure the constants)" may be read by a non expert as teleology and thus he may conclude that physicists are not very serious people. It may also be read as a confirmation of "intelligent design". Manuel
The term "anthropic landscape" is a little misleading, IMO, because it's actually the antithesis of anthropic arguments. The strong and weak versions of the anthropic principle take it for granted that ours is the only universe (the strong one certainly does; the weak one is perhaps a little more agnostic on the subject.) The so-called "anthropic landscape" is simply a hypothesis (and is also a metaphysical claim, I might add) that tries to explain the existence of a fine-tuned universe in which humans live (or, more broadly, in which there is intelligent life--taking for granted that our universe, or any universe with intelligent life, is indeed fine-tuned to some unusual degree) by dismissing the question. It states that our universe might be unusual, but it is not arbitrary--that is, the good reason for its existence is just that there are so many actual universes that one like ours was bound to be in the mix. It's "anthropic" in that it attempts to deal with the reasons for the existence of our universe, but that's as far as it goes. It actually attempts to rebut anthropic arguments, which is why I find it very confusing to call it an "anthropic" landscape.
IMO, and as I understand it, anyway.
(Also, Stephen Weinberg has stated that he doesn't think there's anything to explain. Our universe is neither fine-tuned nor unusual, he says. I am not aware that he has changed his mind. Here are a couple of relevant links:
http://www.meta-library.net/transcript/wein-body.html
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/neimark/design.html) Mzed 21:43, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
How sad that physicists are wasting their lives on such nonsense as string theory. Can anyone believe with a straight face that such things as strings and branes really exist? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.228.215.104 (talk) 02:42, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
