probabilistic propensity | Politics and Prosperity

In “A Digression about Probability and Existence” I address

the view that there is life as we know it — an outcome with a low, prior probability given the (theoretical) multitude of possible configurations of the universe — only because there are vastly many actual or possible universes with vastly many configurations.

I observe that

[i]n this view, life as we know it is an improbable phenomenon that we are able to witness only because we happen to exist in one of the multitude of possible or actual universes.

I should have pointed out that it is impossible to know whether life as we know it is a low-probability event. Such a conclusion rests on an unsupportable assumption: the existence of a universe which is “fine tuned” to enable life is a low-probability event. And yet, that assumption is the basis for assertions that the existence of our universe — with its life-supporting combination of matter, energy, and physical laws — “proves” that there must be other universes because ours is so unlikely. Such “logic” is an edifice of rank circularity constructed on a foundation of pure supposition.

Such “logic,” moreover, misapplies the concept “probability.” No object or event has a probability (knowable chance of happening) unless it meets the following conditions:

1. The object or event is a member of a collective of observable phenomena, where every member of the collective has common features.

2. The collective is a mass phenomenon or an unlimited sequence of observations, where (a) the relative frequencies of particular attributes within the collective tend to fixed limits and (b) these fixed limits remain the same for reasonably large subsets of the collective. (Adapted from “Summary of the Definition,” on pp. 28-9 in Chapter 1, “The Definition of Probability,” of Richard von Mises’s Probability, Statistics and Truth, 1957 Dover edition.)

Mises, obviously, was a “frequentist,” and his view of probability is known as “frequentism.” Despite the criticisms of frequentism (follow the preceding link), it offers the only rigorous view of probability. Nor does it insist (as suggested at the link) that a probability is a precisely knowable or fixed value. But it is a quantifiable value, based on observations of actual objects or events.

Other approaches to probability are vague and subjective. There are, for example, degrees of belief (probabilistic logic), statements of propensity (probabilistic propensity), and “priors” (Bayesian probability). Unlike frequentism, these appeal to speculation, impressions, and preconceptions. Reliance on such notions of probability as evidence of the actual likelihood of an event is the quintessence of circularity.

In summary, there is no sound basis in logic or empirical science for the assertion that the universe we know is a highly improbable one and, therefore must be one of vastly many universes — if it was not the conscious creation of an exogenous force or being (i.e., God). The universe we know simply “is” — and that is all we know or probably can know, as a matter of science.

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