The Higgs Boson aka "The God Particle", and the problem of unnatural fine tuning.

a reply to: TzarChasm

I don't see how you can stand apart and describe the human being as a thing.

Quantum physics has shown that conscious choice is interwoven right into the very heart of the subject/object relationship.

You accuse me of inserting it, the human experience, but you simply cannot remove it and call it insignificant. Well i guess you could try..

I find the atheist paradigm and sentiment to be lacking in awareness or sensitivity and appreciation.

You don't even seem to find this unnatural fine-tuning issue to be the least bit curious.

Meaning? Purpose? Significance? Blah - turns the page..

I am so glad not to be so constrained or limited in the range of what I'm able to consider and contemplate.

You guys are like rocks some of you, and according to your paradigm and worldview (materialist monist), there's little difference.

Excellent post, wow how jumpy atheist get when they see God might be an explanation for basically everything 😂, and im saying might be so they dont turn insane

a reply to: Pbraca

I think we're at a real fork in the road now, but that few realize the predicament that we're in when looking at these questions seriously.

To be honest, I can see where the atheists are coming from in their disturbed and somewhat shrill protestations. It's unnerving.

If this was meant to be, at the most fundamental micro level, then by extension, it also applies to the macro, and all the way to our own experience of being alive!

It's a terrible predicament to be in, but it's better than the alternative (nothing, nowhere).

I think either route leads to crazy, but me I'd rather retain my sense of humor and thus opt for the creative and generous God hypothesis, with meaning and significance included along with a newfound richness.. of appreciation of the opportunity that life presents and makes available to us, from before the very foundation of the world! There's fun in that, and excitement, and childlike wonderment.

And frankly, when we really consider the multiverse strong anthropic principal as the only real viable alternative, taking that other fork leads straight into an atheist foxhole bounded round by a meaningless absurdity that offers no escape back into the land of reason, and a breathtaking view where the answer to the question of "why?" seems to be "because I love you".

Therefore, when faced with the choice, I choose good crazy that remains open to all possibility, instead of a dead, impersonal, and meaningless absurdity that's based on a level of crazy that goes nowhere fast, just to avoid, at any and all cost, God.

I don't see what the problem is being immersed in an ocean of self-aware intelligence if that's the way it really is, was and will always be.

I think the biggest problem with the God hypothesis is that it implies that there's nowhere to hide and that there may be a standard of just judgement that is also the highest expression of love even in the lowest place, to raise us up to ever increasing glory in our own inclusion, and reintegration, as if in a loving, fatherly embrace (think Prodigal Son who, although he was dead and lost, is alive and found again!).

To find one's self in God isn't really such a bad place to be, particularly if it's the truth and the reality, but one whose significance and implications can continue to be explored right down to our own experience and interpersonal relations and outwardly in our every creative endeavor.

There's a certain logic and consistency and integrity to the rational basis for faith, but to also have empirical, scientific data pointing a shaky finger at Intelligence underpinning our reality, only ads to the mirth and charm of it all, like a joke told at the expense of scientists, atheists, and probably most believers, but most certainly at the expense of our human ignorance and presumptuousness, and egotism, when the mystery we're staring straight in the face ought to discombobulate us, and enlighten us, because it forces us to look at everything without and within, in a whole new way.

So, naturalness is an interesting concept based mostly in mathematics and the need to find elegance in models. That is what the issue basically boils down to, and has been a staple during the development of the standard model since the early days. HOWEVER, and it is a big however... as has been pointed out already, the standard model of particle physics is already highly fine tuned... what that really means is that ratios of related parameters are very large, as opposed to being nice and tidy small parameters.

However theorists still chase after so called naturalness, where all tuning parameters are small, because it has a certain mathematical elegance and ease.

Now, OP, your description of supersymmetry is wrong, but it is close enough it is nothing to do with anti-particles, we already have those, it is that every fermion has a high mass boson super-partner, and every boson has a high mass fermion super-partner all differing by 1/2 spin. The reason these theories are popular are exactly because of the issue above, they tend to allow you to create a theory in which the parameter ratios are mostly small.

Furthermore, the Higgs did not really complete the standard model, the graviton still an unknown, has not been detected and really is a theory beyond the standard model...

Now... i actually think that there is no reason why the universe has to follow this so called 'natural' law, i mean why should it conform to any mathematical elegance? It absolutely doesn't have to. It can be the most ugly, twisted system imaginable, there is no requirement for it not to be.

I remember something when i was doing my PhD in neutrino physics, back then the field was just moving into the precision era with a few open questions in regard to neutrino oscillation and mixing. I remember reading a paper that simply stated that mixing in the neutrino sector IS tri-bimaximal, BECAUSE, it makes the system easier to model and deal with on a theoretical level.
Back then, it was not proven to be absolutely tri-bimaximal, one parameter had a very large uncertainty and the other was unknown... so a model was being predicted on one solid number and two which were not known to any good accuracy. YET if you look at papers from that era, they all gun for the concept that the universe has to be elegant and mathematically beautiful.

Now it did turn out to be tri-bimaximal... lol... and there is lots to be said about Occam's razor but i still maintain that the system can absolutely be ugly, and remain correct.

originally posted by: ErosA433

Now it did turn out to be tri-bimaximal... lol...

Tri-bimaximal?! The universe? And here I was finally beginning to accept the LGBTQ community, but that's just too much, I'm sorry but I just can't go there.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork
a reply to: elysiumfire

The real question is whether our present configuration is the product of random chance/happenstance, or, was generated by anticipation with everything fine-tuned just so in order so that this experience could be made possible.

The alternative to fine tuning is that it is a feedback system based on either constructive/destructive interference. Perhaps in the same way as planetary orbital harmonics, Chladni plates or electron orbitals. The only stable configuration is the one that doesn't cancel out but reaches an equilibrium point. Physics uses differential equations where you can only find a point closer to the solution of an equation only if you already know a current point.

These can be extended to as many dimensions as you like (2D, 3D and so on).

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Will come back to this! Wow

AnkhMorpork:

Quantum physics has shown that conscious choice is interwoven right into the very heart of the subject/object relationship.

Quantum theory and experimentation has shown that conscious choice is 'influential' not 'interwoven' as you state...there is a difference. Our observations do not determine the outcome, but uncover the outcome dependent on how we set up the experimentation. We can decide what to look for, but we cannot determine what we see. The apparatus we use to decide what to look for and measure acts as our proxy observance. We cannot decide to look at a particle to measure its momentum, nor can we decide to measure wave form momentum when wanting to observe it as a particle, and even then, it is only a probability factor of wave function collapse, either as a particle or as a wave form. We don't create the actual particle or wave form by our observance, we only observe what is already there, and we can only observe it in one of the two states in which we can observe it, either has a particle (lacking information on its momentum) or as a wave form (lacking information on its particle state).

There are many who think that our conscious state causes wave function collapse...it doesn't. Wave function collapse occurs way before we it enters into our conscious experience. I would posit that wave function collapse actually places us into the conscious state! Unfortunately, to give some detail as to why I think this would take up too much space, but I have already discussed this in other postings...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com... (I did not revist this thread as it requires a formulation so that what is stated cannot be re-interpreted. However, the gist of what I wanted to say is that consciousness is imbued in us as a condition arising from the energetic correspondence between environmental radiations and our sensing organs).

en.wikipedia.org...

should of included this page with my post to explain what i mean, it is this quite nice form that allows the mixing of mass Eigen states with propagation that gives rise to neutrino oscillation.

It is not 'quite' correct since the parameters observed in the universe are slightly different but tribimaximal was a very close approximation

The physical parameters of our universe is not strictly fine-tuned for the life that exists in it, but rather it's the other way around -- life in our universe is fine-tuned for the physical parameters of the universe in which that life began.

Think of it this way: If the universe had totally different physical qualities, and weird and exotic forms of matter existed in it that could not possibly exist in our universe, then the intelligent life in that weird exotic universe (weird and exotic compared to ours) would say "our universe seems fine-tuned for life"...

...and they would be partially right. I say "partially", because it would actually be the same thing I just mentioned above: Their universe is not fine-tuned for their type of life, but rather the type of life that could possibly exist in that "weird" universe would be fine tuned for that universe.

If we say that pour universe is fine-tuned for life, then we could say that ANY universe with any number of combinations of physical parameters in which some form of matter (or even energy?) could organize itself into life could be said to be "fine-tuned" for that life.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork

originally posted by: ErosA433

Now it did turn out to be tri-bimaximal... lol...

Tri-bimaximal?! The universe? And here I was finally beginning to accept the LGBTQ community, but that's just too much, I'm sorry but I just can't go there.

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. --- J.B.S. Haldane.

whoomp, there is is