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Refuting the Fine-Tuning Argument

During a recent friendly debate with some religious acquaintances, I was asked if I could name any arguments for the existence of a god that actually seem “plausible” to me on any level. Suffice it to say that none of the standard religious arguments are in any way convincing, given a moment’s thought. However, there is a relatively recent argument that’s been gaining popularity over the last few years, and it requires more than a trivial amount of effort to dismiss. This is the argument from fine-tuning.

In case you’re not aware of the argument, it takes the following form:

Take any physical constant that we know of (e.g. the coupling constant of the strong nuclear force, the cosmological constant governing the expansion of the universe, etc). If that constant had been a fraction of a percent different, then life wouldn’t exist (or star formation wouldn’t be possible, or the universe would collapse back in on itself, etc). Therefore, there must have been some intelligent agent who created the universe with the precise physical constants needed for stars and planets to form, and for life to eventually arise.

There’s no denying that it sounds like an interesting, even powerful argument. In fact, some people with whom I’ve recently spoken claim this as the most compelling argument for their continued belief in a god.

Well, let’s analyze this argument carefully, and see why it, too, ends up being less than convincing.

To begin, the universe isn’t exactly overflowing with life. The universe is more than 99.99% empty space. Most of our solar system is completely uninhabitable, except for a small rocky planet that is on a constant knife-edge of environmental stability, and is just one asteroid away from mass extinction. It certainly doesn’t appear like the universe was created with us “in mind.” If anything, our presence in the universe is an infinitesimal smear polluting a stupefyingly vast nothingness. Some “design,” wouldn’t you say?

I might be willing to believe in the fine-tuning argument if we had discovered that there was no universe beyond the Earth, and that the sky was just a canopy above the Earth with the stars being points of light on the canopy.
This should sound familiar: it’s what we believed two thousand years ago, before we learned better.

So it seems like the desire to believe in the fine-tuning argument is a throwback to the pre-scientific need to feel special, and to cling on to the infantile philosophy that the universe is made specially for us. But we know that every lesson that we’ve had from science over the last 500 years has been a lesson in humility. With each discovery in physics or astronomy, we find that we’re less and less special.

It’s a bit of a straw man argument, as well, and it also smells of the “god of the gaps” fallacy. It’s saying that just because physicists don’t yet understand where Constant X comes from, it must have been designed by a supreme designer.

Just because an “unexplained” constant exists in physics doesn’t mean that it’s free to be adjusted. No one brings up an argument like, “if π was equal to 3 instead of 3.14…, then mathematics wouldn’t be possible.” It’s meaningless to change the value of π, because π simply represents a geometric relationship between circles and diameters. In other words, the value of π is not a degree of freedom for the universe. The same could very well be true for many of the physical constants which we haven’t explained yet.

At the same time, it’s possible that there are many other universes apart from this one, where physical constants are in fact different, and we’ve simply won a lottery of universes by being born in this one, just like we’ve won a lottery of planets by being born on this planet, and not another similar planet in a distant star system.

The more basic point I’m approaching here is that physicists don’t yet have an explanation for a great many things. We’ve only had quantum mechanics for less than 100 years. We don’t have an explanation for the expansion of the universe. We haven’t unified all the forces yet. We’ve only unified electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force 40 years ago. So it’s extremely premature to say that we know anything about these constants in any deeper sense than “they exist.” And it’s absolutely presumptuous and unwarranted to say that not only do you have a deeper understanding of the physical constants than all physicists in the world, but that you have specific knowledge that a designer-god tweaked some knobs to make the constants the way they are.

We’re in no position to make any judgment about this, given the state of our current knowledge of actual physics.  And anyone who claims to have special knowledge about where the physical constants come from deserves suspicion by default.

Lastly, even if we suppose that the fine-tuning argument suggests some kind of god, the only type of god it can possibly be is a sort of Deistic god; a god who might have “created” the universe and left it alone. In no way does it suggest a god who intervenes in people’s lives or answers prayers, and it’s certainly not an argument for the god of the Bible. It takes just as much work to go from a Deistic god to a prayer-answering god than it does from no god at all.

So, to summarize, we don’t know where some of our physical constants come from, or why their values are what they are. Or rather, we don’t know yet. But the point is that it’s okay not to know! Not knowing is the driving force behind every facet of human inquiry. Perhaps one day we might discover that the universe really was built by an intelligent designer. But that discovery will be made with the same scientific rigor as all discoveries before it, instead of being built upon holes in our current knowledge.

The fine-tuning argument is therefore precisely that: an argument that depends on lack of knowledge. I submit that this realization by itself should disqualify the argument from honest use in debates. It should also disqualify the argument from being a plausible reason for belief in a god.

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Correctly naming your photos

I seem to be very minimal in my strategy of organizing my digital photo collection. I have a single folder on my computer called “Pictures,” and subfolders that correspond to every year (2011, 2010, …) since the year I was born. Some of the years contain subfolders that correspond to noteworthy trips that I’ve taken.

This method makes it extremely easy to back up my entire photo collection by dragging the “Pictures” folder to a different drive. It also makes it easy to reference and review the photos in rough chronological order. This is why I’ve never understood the purpose of third-party “photo management” software, since most such software inevitably reorganizes the underlying directories in its own crazy way, or builds a proprietary index of photos that takes the user away from the actual directory structure. If you’re aware of the organization of your photos on your disk, then any additional management software becomes superfluous.

At any rate, there is one slight issue with this style of organizing photos: all of the various sources of photos (different cameras, scanners, cell phones, etc) give different file names to the photos! So, when all the photos are combined into a single directory, they often conflict with each other, or at the very least become a disjointed mess. For example, the file names can be in the form DSC_xxxx, IMG_xxxx, or something similar, which isn’t very meaningful. Photos taken will cell phones are a little better; they’re usually composed of the date and time the photo was taken, but the naming format is still not uniform across all cell phone manufacturers.

Thus, the optimal naming scheme for photos would be based on the date/time, but in a way that is common between all sources of photos. This would organize the photos in natural chronological order. The vast majority of cameras and cell phones encode the date and time into the EXIF block of each photo. If only there was a utility that would read each photo, and rename it based on the date/time stored within it. Well, now there is:

Download it now! (Or browse the source code on GitHub)

This is a very minimal utility that takes a folder full of photos and renames each one based on its date/time EXIF tag. As long as you set the time on your camera(s) correctly, this will ensure that all your photos will be named in a natural and uniform way.

The tool lets you select the “pattern” of the date and time that you’d like to apply as the file name. The default pattern will give you file names similar to “20111028201345.jpg” (for a photo taken on Oct 28 2011, 20:13:45), which means that you’ll be able to sort the photos chronologically just by sorting them by name!

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Pi is wrong! Long live Tau!

At one point or another, we’ve all had a feeling that something is not quite right in the world. It’s a huge relief, therefore, to discover someone else who shares your suspicion. (I’m also surprised that it’s taken me this long to stumble on this!)

It has always baffled me why we define π to be the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, when it should clearly be the ratio of the circumference to its radius. This would make π become the constant 6.2831853…, or 2 times the current definition of π.

Why should we do this? And what effect would this have?

Well, for starters, this would remove an unnecessary factor of 2 from a vast number of equations in modern physics and engineering.

Most importantly, however, this would greatly improve the intuitive significance of π for students of math and physics. π is supposed to be the “circle constant,” a constant that embodies a very deep relationship between angles, radii, arc lengths, and periodic functions.

The definition of a circle is the set of points in a plane that are a certain distance (the radius) from the center. The circumference of the circle is the arc length that these points trace out. The circle constant, therefore, should be the ratio of the circumference to the radius.

To avoid confusion we’ll use the symbol tau (\tau) to be our new circle constant (as advocated by Michael Hartl, from the Greek τόρνος, meaning “turn”), and make it equal to 6.283…, or 2\pi.

In high school trigonometry class, students are required to make the painful transition from degrees to radians. And what’s the definition of a radian? It’s the ratio of the length of an arc (a partial circumference) to its radius! Our intuition should tell us that the ratio of a full circumference to the radius should be the circle constant.

Instead, students are taught that a full rotation is 2\pi radians, and that the sine and cosine functions have a period of 2\pi. This is intuitively clunky and fails to illustrate the true beauty of the circle constant that \pi is supposed to be. This is surely part of the reason that so many students fail to grasp these relationships and end up hating mathematics. A full rotation should be \tau radians! The period of the sine and cosine functions should be \tau!

But… wouldn’t we have to rewrite all of our textbooks and scientific papers that make use of \pi?

Yes, we would. And in doing so we would make them much easier to understand! You can read the Tau Manifesto website to see examples of the beautiful simplifications that \tau would bring to mathematics, so I won’t repeat them here. You can also read the original opinion piece by Bob Palais that explores this subject.

It’s not particularly surprising that the ancient Greeks used the diameter of a circle (instead of the radius) in their definition of \pi, since the diameter is easier to measure, and also because they couldn’t have foreseen the ubiquity of this constant in virtually all sciences.

However, it’s a little unfortunate that someone like Euler, Leibniz, or Bernoulli didn’t pave the way for redefining \pi to be 6.283…, thus missing the opportunity to simplify mathematics for generations to come.

Aside from all the aesthetic improvements this would bring, considering how vitally important it is for more of our high school students (and beyond) to understand and appreciate mathematics, we need all the “optimizations” we can get to make mathematics more palatable for them. This surely has to be an optimization to consider seriously!

From now on, I’m a firm believer in tauism! Are you?

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Good and bad science, and faster-than-light neutrinos

The results from the OPERA experiment at CERN have caused a huge stir in the media over the last two weeks, and with good reason, since they claim to have measured the arrival of a neutrino beam 60 nanoseconds faster than light.

Before we go on, let’s calm down a bit. Even if these results are somehow confirmed, it wouldn’t “prove Einstein wrong,” or cause scientists to stop using General and Special Relativity on a day-to-day basis. If anything, it would show that Einstein’s theory is incomplete, but no one is disputing this in the first place.

Relativity (general and special) has been put through dozens of independent, precise, elaborate tests, and passed every single one with astonishing accuracy, which means that there’s definitely something fundamentally correct about Einstein’s theory. It shouldn’t be thought of as some kind of “sitting duck” theory, just waiting to be overthrown.

Understandably, the current consensus among the world’s physicists seems to be that there was a measurement error in the OPERA experiment, or that the experimenters neglected to integrate some subtle factor that accounts for the missing 60 ns. (For a wonderfully accessible introduction to the OPERA experiment, as well as particle physics in general, read Matt Strassler’s blog. For a more thorough discussion of possible mistakes, read Lubos Motl’s post on the subject. It’s also worthwhile to read the comments on those blogs.)

Perhaps the most convincing evidence against this experiment is that we have observed neutrino emissions from supernovae (specifically SN 1987A), and these neutrinos more-or-less coincided with our observation of visible light from the same supernova. If neutrinos are really faster than light, we should have observed the neutrinos many months before we observed the light. The only loophole in this argument would be if the OPERA effect is energy dependent, since the OPERA neutrinos had much more energy than the ones from the supernova, but that would present even more problems.

Not being a particle physicist myself, I can’t meaningfully contribute to the discussions on theoretical implications of this experiment, if it’s actually true. I would, however, like to comment on how this story is unfolding from the point of view of the scientific method, and specifically how this story highlights the differences between real science and pseudoscience. I use “pseudoscience” to refer to homeopathy, energy healing products, reiki, dowsing, magnets, pendulums, astrology, and anything else that requires more “faith” than evidence.

In the wake of attending a New Age expo (out of morbid curiosity) and being overloaded with crackpots, quacks, and hucksters, these differences become all the more plain:

  • The fact that the experimenters published any data at all is a sign of great scientific integrity. The fact that they held a press conference before the paper was peer-reviewed is a bit unfortunate, as noted by Lawrence Krauss, but I think the fact that this story made it to mainstream media outlets will help the general public understand the scientific process, as people follow the story. Pseudoscientists, on the other hand, seem to be allergic to data in general, and never publish anything.
  • Essentially, the scientists of the OPERA experiment are saying, “We’ve gathered these data, we used the best possible experimental parameters, we’ve performed all the checks we could think of, and we still see this anomaly. So please, tell us what we did wrong.” This is surely science at its best! This is the kind of behavior that should be an inspiration for a whole generation of new scientists. We will never hear pseudoscientists utter that phrase.
  • Real scientists don’t adhere dogmatically to any theory, no matter how foundational it may be. Even though most physicists agree that there was an error in the OPERA experiment, they still reserve a little room for the possibility that the results are correct, and that Relativity might be violated. Einstein to physicists is not the same as Chopra is to pseudoscientists.
  • Real scientists expect extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. Most scientists agree that the evidence collected by the OPERA experiment is not extraordinary. Pseudoscientists make extraordinary claims every time they open their mouth, but present no evidence at all, except anecdotal testimonials from their friends and paid endorsers.
  • If we read the blogs of popular physicists on the subject of the OPERA experiment, we find lively debates on theoretical explanations for the anomalous effect, and discussions on ways the experimenters miscalculated the speed of the neutrinos. The key point is: scientists get excited about the possibility of being proven wrong. Scientists can’t wait to be proven wrong, because it would mean that there’s more science to be done!
  • Perhaps most importantly, real scientists are motivated by a desire to better understand our world. The only motivation of pseudoscientists is money, thinly veiled by a scientific-sounding sales pitch, and a nonsensical product du jour.

In any case, I encourage everyone to follow this story, because it’s a high-profile example of real science at work; a triumph of human achievement. No matter how the results turn out, by observing the process of scientific scrutiny, everyone will be better equipped to spot pseudoscience when it’s in plain sight.

I will update this post as soon as I see a quack energy-healing product that uses faster-than-light neutrinos to balance the flow of energy through your chakras. Post a comment if you find one yourself!

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Atheism as a religion

It annoys me to no end when religious people claim that atheism is “a religion” or that atheism is just as “dogmatic” as religious beliefs. This will be the subject of a much longer article at some point, but until then, let me share a quick aside on this topic.

Here’s a key difference between atheists and religious people:

Atheists don’t need any mechanism of reinforcement for their beliefs. Since we draw our beliefs from the natural world, we don’t need to appeal to imaginary beings and reassure ourselves that they exist, despite overwhelming evidence that they don’t. We don’t need to speak empty words into empty air every day, while banging our heads against the floor. We don’t need to congregate in a large room for a session of mutual emotional masturbation where a charismatic leader (who actually refers to us as a “flock”) assures us that our beliefs are infallible and questioning them is pointless or even dangerous.

We never need to switch off our rational minds, or even put them in the back seat for the purpose of indulging ourselves in believing things that our ignorant barbaric ancestors tell us to believe. Perhaps the words “ignorant” and “barbaric” are too harsh; our ancestors did the best they could. The point is, the ignorance of our ancestors is forgivable. What’s unforgivable is clinging on to that same ignorance in our modern world. Even less forgivable is considering it a virtue to perpetuate such ignorance.

We are capable of drawing feelings of spirituality from the grandeur and complexity of the natural world. Instead of using our imagination to invent more intricate ways of deluding ourselves, we use our imagination to improve the quality of life for current and future generations, since we know that this life is the only one we get, which makes it all the more precious and fragile.

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