The Michael Shermer Show 175. Brian Keating — How it All Began: Cosmic Inflation, the Multiverse, and the Nature of Scientific Proof
Apr 24, 2021
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Purpose Does Not Follow From Cosmic Scale
- Multiverse arguments cannot automatically reject design because both hypotheses require assumptions beyond direct observation.
- A universe’s apparent purpose may reflect human perspective rather than an objective cosmic intention.
Imaginary Time Does Not Prove A Beginningless Universe
- Hawking’s popular no-boundary explanation uses imaginary time, a mathematical transformation rather than directly measurable physical time.
- Keating argues that the resulting claim about time having no beginning is not accepted as established cosmology.
The String Landscape Creates A Prediction Crisis
- String theory’s landscape permits enormous numbers of possible vacuum states and universes.
- Keating worries that an undefined probability measure can make predictions mathematically ill-defined and weaken the scientific method.