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Applying the BIC in practice is far from straightforward and fraught with difficulties because it requires the regularization of space-time infinities by implementing some cosmic “measure.” Furthermore, a suitable physical quantity must be chosen as proxy for the number of reference class observers in some given space-time region. Unfortunately, the choices made in this procedure are prone to being exploited – often unintentionally – by the researchers as so-called researcher degrees of freedom (a term from the social science literature) to yield those results that would best conform to their theoretical preferences. In the light of this difficulty, the prospects for obtaining compelling evidence in favor of any specific multiverse theory by testing whether our observations are those that typical multiverse inhabitants would make do look bad. As it turns out, the multiverse theories that have the best chances of being successfully tested empirically are those that do not behave as typical multiverse theories in important respects – i.e., those multiverse theories according to which all universes in the multiverse are similar or identical in a significant number of ways.
If the laws of nature are fine-tuned for life, can we infer other universes with different laws? How could we even test such a theory without empirical access to those distant places? Can we believe in the multiverse of the Everett interpretation of quantum theory or in the reality of other possible worlds, as advocated by philosopher David Lewis? At the intersection of physics and philosophy of science, this book outlines the philosophical challenge to theoretical physics in a measured, well-grounded manner. The origin of multiverse theories are explored within the context of the fine-tuning problem and a systematic comparison between the various different multiverse models are included. Cosmologists, high energy physicists, and philosophers including graduate students and researchers will find a systematic exploration of such questions in this important book.
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