> We can go even further in considering our existential luck.
We can, but it quickly becomes nonsense.
The problem with existential luck is that we don' know the odds. Obviously, based on our current understanding of physics, we can come up with an estimate. But that understanding has to be wrong, because we can't explain why the universe exists at all. Forget the cosmological constant having lucky values, what are the odds that physical constants exist as opposed to there being a matterless void?
I could make an unfalsifiable prediction that there is some sort of N-dimensional super-soup where all 3 dimensions of space, time and physical constants and maybe some huge number of others to determine starting conditions are an axis on a hypercube of unimaginable proportions. Then, everything is a certainty. The amount of luck involved in any particular space-time-other point existing is 1 and there is no luck anywhere. In some sense reality has to be of that nature, because the odds of us existing by chance is so small it suggests that our model is wrong and our existence was in fact guaranteed.
Their "existential luck looks no different from the "circumstantial luck" to me - an asteroid hitting the earth is indeed in the matter of being "at the wrong place at the wrong time".
But as someone said here, it's all about probability distributions and trying to minimize/maximize your chances.
I like to believe that there is not such a thing as "chance", that it is all about hidden variables, but I've been told right here before that the quantum theory says otherwise.
> In some sense reality has to be of that nature, because the odds of us existing by chance is so small it suggests that our model is wrong and our existence was in fact guaranteed.
Sampling bias: we only exist to perceive the reality in which we exist. the countless realities in which we don't exist, we don't experience.
> Forget the cosmological constant having lucky values, what are the odds that physical constants exist as opposed to there being a matterless void?
The odds of there being something rather than nothing are absolutely zero. This is easily seen because for the odds to be anything more than that would require some reason, and that reason, whatever it might be, would be something. This is why a matterless void isn’t actually nothing.
We can, but it quickly becomes nonsense.
The problem with existential luck is that we don' know the odds. Obviously, based on our current understanding of physics, we can come up with an estimate. But that understanding has to be wrong, because we can't explain why the universe exists at all. Forget the cosmological constant having lucky values, what are the odds that physical constants exist as opposed to there being a matterless void?
I could make an unfalsifiable prediction that there is some sort of N-dimensional super-soup where all 3 dimensions of space, time and physical constants and maybe some huge number of others to determine starting conditions are an axis on a hypercube of unimaginable proportions. Then, everything is a certainty. The amount of luck involved in any particular space-time-other point existing is 1 and there is no luck anywhere. In some sense reality has to be of that nature, because the odds of us existing by chance is so small it suggests that our model is wrong and our existence was in fact guaranteed.