The only book I read that discusses the fine-tuning argument is Martin Rees' Just Six Numbers - the gist of the book is that 6 physical constants have values that make life possible with very little margin for error. Even the smallest deviation from measured values would mean a lifeless, barren universe. — Agent Smith
Yes. But those abstract ratios have little meaning for the average person.
It's the metaphorical interpretation that makes the difference. In that case, someone already inclined toward the concept that the world is
not a barren hostile environment, but a milieu favorable for human flourishing, will tend to interpret the ambiguous evidence as a "glass half full". Yet, someone else, who already feels the world is antagonistic to their own personal flourishing, may logically infer a universe "going to hell in a hand cart". As you said,
it only takes the "smallest deviation" (in interpretation) to turn a positive value to negative. That's why soft metaphorical Philosophy, unlike hard empirical Science, is always debatable. So, each of us has to make his own personal interpretation. Mine leans toward "half full", but is technically
BothAnd.
As for the limits of reductionism, — Agent Smith
This very morning, I read in
Existential Physics, that "
without quantum mechanics, the laws of nature are deterministic". And, I might add : Reductive. Yet, when we look at the foundations of physics,
Determinism & Reductionism seem to transform (illogically) into
Probability & Holism. To which, Einstein objected that (his classical) "God doesn't play dice". In her book, Hossenfelder discusses the "double slit" experiment as the crux of quantum "weirdness". But it's merely a matter of interpretation. For instance, if you (reductively) imagine a single particle passing through two slits at the same time, it doesn't make classical (reductive) sense.
But, if instead you imagine the particle entangled in a holistic ocean of statistical probability, then it looks like normal wave behavior. So, the paradoxes of Quantum Weirdness arise due to the conflicting metaphors we imagine, not from any contradictions in reality.
I subscribe to some form of emergentism which to my reckoning is the position that an additional ontological level arises from but is more than the level below it, complete with its own set of laws. — Agent Smith
Yes.
Those "ontological levels" are metaphors for emergent behaviors in physics. In my thesis, I use the term "Phase Transition" to illustrate how a continuous process can seem to be a sudden transformation, from one state-of-being (e.g. fluid water) to something with completely different observed properties (crystalline ice or ethereal gas).
The transformation is not magic, but merely emergent. And Emergence is a holistic (systemic) phenomenon. The (reductive) parts (H2O) remain the same, but their (holistic) system behavior is objectively different.
From Hossenfelder's discussion, it occurred to me that
spooky-entanglement-at-a-distance, and holistic-ontological-level-superposition are not so weird, if we just view them as descriptions of mathematical sums instead of physical particles. To be specific, the Wave Function merely describes the probable future state (ontological level) of an integrated system. A "function' is just a mathematical statement of a (holistic) group interrelationship. By using The Calculus method, we compute the sum of all points below a curve via the technique of Integration.
The individual points are still there, but they have been integrated into a system, from which we can extract an average (holistic) value. I suppose this is also the mathematical basis of
Integrated Information Theory.
What does all this have to do with the OP? Merely, that
some view the Big Bang, and subsequent Evolution, as the behavior of isolated particles, instead of an integrated system. The particles may behave (reductively) randomly, but the (holistic) process behaves as an interrelated system, guided by natural laws and initial conditions toward some ultimate Ontological State. If we could do the math, we might even be able to compute that Final State.
↪180 Proof