Anthropic Principles, Ping-Pong Balls, and a Very Ridiculous Universe
While waiting for the sleep train, I’ve spent too much time watching YouTube.
Right now, I am not sure of the time. Navigating this pandemic has kept me indoors, and all the artificial lighting has been taking liberties with my Circadian rhythm and sleep-wake cycle.
So, while waiting for the sleep train, I’ve spent too much time watching YouTube. I’ve learned a lot about whistle registers and transparent hardwood and taking dents out of sousaphones—all of which I’ll write about later.
For now, let’s dwell upon the Nature of the Universe.
Actually, I’m not talking about debating the nature of this universe. Yes, wonderful YouTubers like Sabine Hossenfelder and Anton Petrov do a spectacular job of explaining the Schwarzchild radius and Einstein’s field equations—but I am there strictly to listen and appreciate. I’m no astrophysicist, and playing at Monday-morning cosmologist just isn’t for me.
However, I AM a novelist. Currently, I’m drafting my second novel for Tor Books. Tor is a science fiction/fantasy press, and with this science fiction/fantasy book I’m writing now, I’m doing some serious universe-building.
Monday-morning cosmology, anyone? :p
Actually, universe-building is a lot more fun when I’m not burdened with reality. An unknown radiation bathes the entire city of Cleveland and gives all its inhabitants superpowers? Sure, what if?
In novel-writing land, the only implications I need to worry about are what happens to my plot and characters. Other than that, I’m free to “what if?” all I want.
Lately, I’ve been asking “what if” about intelligent design. I’m not so concerned about whether intelligent design is true—but in the different ways that it could be true.
Basically, intelligent design is an assertion that our universe is so complex that someone had to have built it. The classic “watchmaker” argument by the 18th century English clergyman William Paley compares the universe to a watch found at the side of the road--no one in their right mind would pick up such an object and think it had simply formed naturally.
There had to have been a watchmaker.
In many ways, our universe does fit together intricately. If you alter the values of its various physical constants even slightly, bad things happen. Change the gravitational constant, or the Coulomb constant, or other constants that I really don't know too much about, and suddenly matter doesn't hold together, or the universe has too much radiation and explodes, and so on and so forth.
As with all proofs of faith, this argument is far from airtight, and concepts such as the many-worlds interpretation and anthropic principle can give us a perfectly habitable universe without any cosmically creative watchmaker.
But then again, what if?
"I say we put a universe over there, right next to the Panda Express..." *
In my experience as a novelist, attributing major plot developments to chance doesn’t make for the most compelling narrative. Rather than hearing, “Well, it just happened,” people want reasons and motivations. People want personifications. And, since the beginning of history, storytellers have done well by asserting that this universe was created for some reason by some sort of creator.
Usually, this creator is far more powerful than we mortals, because making a universe obviously requires a lot of heavy lifting, and far more intelligent, even omniscient—because, well… our universe is an obviously excellent place.
But how powerful or intelligent does the watchmaker have to be?
There's something sublime about an all-powerful creator, but there's also something terrifying about it. In a universe created by chance, at least we can say we got lucky. But if an omniscient omnipotent creator can create one universe, then why stop there? What would our puny universe even mean to such a being?
Which brings me to How Ridiculous, a YouTube channel featuring three entertaining young men from Perth. Brett Stanford, Derek Herron, and Scott Gaunson are not only charismatic and funny, they have done some amazing things. They have scored a bullseye with a dart thrown from a 250-meter-high dam in Switzerland. They’ve dropped a ping-pong ball from the rafters of an athletic stadium into single plastic cup.
How Ridiculous holds the Guinness World records for longest golf putt (120.6 meters) and basketball shot (201.42 meters). By the way, the basketball was shot off a waterfall.
If you had just seen these feats, and many others, you would doubtless assume that these Stanford, Herron and Gaunson possess superhuman talents. And yes, they are talented, but what makes this threesome so refreshing, so engaging is that they also document and share all the times they fail.
In fact, they revel in their failure.
This isn't coincidence or chance—they are working deliberately toward their goal. Yet for every amazing perfect throw or perfect catch…there are sooooo many failures. There are so many moans and groans and good-natured PG-13 curses. To get this shot, this bullseye, they dedicate hours and days—sometimes coming so close that my viewer’s heart just breaks.
And I wonder, what if the universe had been the result of a process just like that? What if, yes, the universe is the product of intelligence, but it is also the product of constant errors and constant mistakes and constant retakes and constant failures?
Which universe would you prefer? One in which a perfect watchmaker can produce perfection at will? Or one whose imperfect watchmaker tries and tries and tries and fails and fails and fails—but oh how they celebrate when they finally succeed?
As for me, watching yet another bowling ball shatter on side of the dam, or a dart veer wildly off an array of colorful wooden pallets, I'm thinking how much fun it would be if, like these gentlemen, our creators were lovably laughing and failing—not just snapping their fingers, but risking hypothermia, enduring so many mistakes and retakes....getting, very very frustrated and it’s getting colder and the sun is going down, and then—in that one special take—everything is just right, and there is so much rejoicing, not just because it’s perfect, but because getting that one moment of perfection was just so effing hard.
"YES!!!! Finally a dog—all afternoon it's been badger, badger, badger..."
Because what better reason for us to matter? What better reason for God to so love this world?
WAAAHHHH! The ball went in! The ball went in! We SCORED!!!!
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NEXT WEEK: Spiderman, Sousaphones, and a Sidequest for Messenger RNA!
*Photo Credits: Cover photo by Steven Su on Unsplash. Photos by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona and Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash
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