Anonymous wrote:

"My own instincts are to think Davies and the Anthropic Principle are out to lunch -- but my own instincts tell me a lot of things that aren't supported by reality.

They ARE out to lunch. The problem is that a comprehensive rebuttal demands more time than most of us are prepared to deliver (and right now, I am in the middle of writing a new monograph on solar flare prediction).

If you want to see a slam bang demolition of the whole AP crap I suggest you get hold of Dawkins' The God Delusion. He crushes this absurd, homo-centric pile of rubbish better than anyone I know, and does it with class, humor and flair.

island01 wrote:

"Yeah, about like the humor that the clowns use that are trying to "explain-away, (without giving equal time to), the WMAP anomalies that are most apparently calling you a liar.

Yeah, and yadda yadda.

Bottom line is that AP is not a "principle" but a crude ansatz based on radical assumptions (e.g. no other ET species to share the cosmos with us) and statistical coincidences that are stretched - via a "hunch" - to explanatory proficiency and preferential existence for one world or species. I also call it codswallop.

As I noted, even a minor change in G (from quantum interference of the type endorsed by Davies) won't change things one iota. Won't make Blue giants burn faster, or change "habitable zones" around G-stars. (Btw, I abhor the odiously parochial "habitable zones" in the extreme.)

Personally, between you and me, I am convinced humans are the cockroaches of the sentient cosmos. I also suspect it is only a matter of time we will encounter the superior species that will rightly asert its bona fides over us- by technologically stomping us into oblivion- before we can issue one equation or thought to try to show our "intelligence".

THEN this AP crappola will be put to rest once and for all.