How do we know that the physical laws needed to produce us aren't simply among the most probable, most stable outcomes of universe-creation events?

Well, that's actually what the anthropic principle is about. It is an attempt to explain the structure of our universe from first the first principles that constrains the forces of the universe in the manner in which they are.

We have no mechanism for explaining this, as no practical model of expansion driven turbulance even comes close to producing the kind of set-up that we have.

That's why theorists are proposing a multiverse and "cosmological selection effects" to rationalize their way around not being able to say, look...

A big bang will produce a near-flat yet expanding universe because this it the most natural configuration per the least action principle because... [the answer that goes here says nothing about infinities, multiverses, or "cosmological selection effects", jack]

So what they're doing is what I consider to be a bigger cop-out on first-principles than what Mr. Barrow is attempting to do.

interesting. thanks.

but a developed (omnipresent, omnipotent, etc.?) Intelligent Being getting not just the quantities but the laws just right to produce you and me still seems quite a leap as "a first principle."

You ask a reasonable question: "A big bang will produce a near-flat yet expanding universe because this it the most natural configuration per the least action principle because... [the answer that goes here says nothing about infinities, multiverses, or "cosmological selection effects", jack]"

Some possible answers, none, alas, involving filling in the blank:

-- The motions of the heavenly bodies seemed similarly inexplicable, so God was posited as the only reasonable answer. Then along came Mr. Newton, who was finally "able to say, look..." The development of complex life seemed similarly inexplicable, so God was posited, until along came Mr. Darwin.... Someone will come along, one of these decades, with an answer to this puzzle, too (the flatness of this universe, its coziness for intelligent us and its tendency to produce attractive sunsets) -- an answer that doesn't raise more questions than it answers by positing the most super of supernatural beings. God shouldn't be allowed to sneak back in whenever scientists hesitate over a question (and this hasn't been such a long hesitation, as these things go).

-- "multiverse and 'cosmological selection effects'" might just do it. A number of hints arriving (in inflation theory, etc.) that this universe is not alone. Stable universes, as I argued in the entry, survive; unstable universes don't produce physicists and theologians to debate this sort of thing.

-- implicit in some of these more recent anthropic (and multiple universes) arguments is the currently fashionable notion that physical laws (various constants, etc.) might have been otherwise. Fascinating notion. But maybe they couldn't have been; maybe this is the way things had to end up: with something 'stead of nothin', with a rather "flat" something, with vast stretches of that something kinda cold and empty, with a tiny corner (or two or more) occupied with creatures capable of blog-making. Again, this seems much less astounding to me than the Great, Bigger-Than-All-Universes, Puppeteer.

but a developed (omnipresent, omnipotent, etc.?) Intelligent Being getting not just the quantities but the laws just right to produce you and me still seems quite a leap as "a first principle."

Careful, Barrow didn't make any of those claims, regardless of what the templeton foundation represents. You cannot automatically condem a man that's holding a bible for also doing science anyway. What he said was entirely in line with science.

A possible answers, involving filling in the blank:

Bring in "dissipative structuring"... humans and black holes are far-from-equilibrium dissipative structures, which "coincidentally?"... quantum theory is inherently unable to describe, except that it can be done by way of the "Limblad Equation", which derives that flatness serves as a natural damping mechanism, because it prevents an imbalanced harmonic oscillator from evolving inhomogeneously... *IF* the universe is finite and causally bound.

That means that intelligent life will be as common to the universe as the need for it demands, and in fact the AP readily extends to and cannot be restricted from including every last banded spiral galaxy as us, in terms of the requirement that we occupy a special spaciotemporal location, we are far from alone on this layer.

hmmm... I wonder if science is willing to give up infinity and the multiverse for this identifiable first principle?

Wow, I really blew this paragraph. Sorry if it added to any confusion:

That means that intelligent life will be as common to the universe as the need for it demands, and, in fact, the AP readily extends to, and cannot be restricted from including every last banded spiral galaxy... [that exists on the same evolutionary "plane"] ...as us... [as a biocentric principle] ...in terms of the requirement that we occupy a special spaciotemporal location... [in the history of the universe] ...we are far from alone on this layer.

And there should be about three periods in there too... ;)

I'm not clear on how you get from "flatness serves as a natural damping mechanism," which I kinda understand, to "That means that intelligent life will be as common to the universe as the need for it demands," which I don't pretend to understand at all.

I don't think physics matters much in this discussion.

It could be that the laws of physics are fundamental and must be what they are--i.e., if we pursue logic and math far enough, we'll learn that the only logically/mathematically consistent system is this one.

Barring that, though, all we have is a universe that created us instead of something else. Had it not been this universe creating us, it would've been some other universe creating some other us.

Of course, there are certainly universes that can't support intelligent life, and the fact that ours does may be remarkable, but the multiverse principle completely accounts for this problem and isn't experimentally verifiable as long as you define a universe as a completely closed system.

I'm not clear on how you get from "flatness serves as a natural damping mechanism," which I kinda understand, to "That means that intelligent life will be as common to the universe as the need for it demands," which I don't pretend to understand at all.

The point was that the configuration of the universe requires the formation of far from equilibrium dissipative structures like humans and black holes in order to keep it from running-away, so the strength of the need determines how many of these structures will be produced.

I don't think physics matters much in this discussion.

It could be that the laws of physics are fundamental and must be what they are--i.e., if we pursue logic and math far enough, we'll learn that the only logically/mathematically consistent system is this one.

Well this is certainly a new way of doing science, because, where I come from, systems are logically/mathematically consistent with, and are determined by the physics, not the other way round... lol

Barring that, though, all we have is a universe that created us instead of something else. Had it not been this universe creating us, it would've been some other universe creating some other us.

No, that's not "ALL" that we have. We also have the anthropic coincidences from which the AP fell, which note that any other configuration would cause the universe to run so far away from conditions that are conducive only to "life as we know it" that it would make your head swim.