Link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/earths-organisms-developed-via-evolution-some-theorists-wonder-what-if-the-entire-cosmos-did-too-180989338/

...Historically, scientists have viewed the cosmos as akin to a rock—complex, perhaps even beautiful, but formed through arbitrary events. Evolutionary cosmologists instead argue that universes, like living organisms, grow and reproduce, spinning off new universes with small variations from their progenitors. In doing so, these cosmic offspring are refined across generations into forms that maximize the number of universes yet to be born. Since the Big Bang, our universe, like any developing child, has been unfurling into an optimal shape.

Under this view, the universe is not a rock. It is an egg...

Smolin’s work was, in turn, inspired by physicists Bryce DeWitt and John Wheeler, who proposed that singularities inside black holes, the places where matter is crushed into a point of infinite density, might expand to produce new universes that follow different physics from the universes that produced them. Every universe—including our own—would, under this logic, have emerged from a Big Bang within a black hole.

Smolin realized that this hypothetical process would allow universes to reproduce, in a way, by making more black holes. And if those new universes could inherit the physics of their parents with small differences—just as new organisms inherit the genes of their parents with small differences—then universes could also evolve with each generation. Specifically, a form of cosmic natural selection would favor universes that make as many black holes as possible. Less fertile universes could persist, but they would produce far fewer offspring. So over time, an increasingly high proportion of universes would be optimized for black hole production—which would imply that our universe, given the odds, is one of those...

This is cool, but until we can probe further into black holes, seems unfalsifiable

This is more of a metaphysical theory than a physical one

It's ironic that some lifeforms evolved to not believe in evolution.

wow that is a mind fuck to read first thing in the morning

LOVE IT

If I were to write this as hard science fiction, I would say that the countless possible multidimensional foldings of string theory could fill the role of genetic code. The black hole/big bang bottleneck (no longer a proper singularity) then creates a brief window in which energies are raised high enough that the folding specification can mutate, but the window is so brief that only a tiny fraction of folding possibilities are affected each time. Thus a child universe inherits the folding specification of a parent universe with slight mutations. Because this bottleneck has such incredibly high energy the vacuum energy of the mutations doesn't matter in the moment of mutation, allowing the mutations to be random.

Now, after this new universe has expanded (assuming it is viable with its mutations), the vacuum energy settles on some metastable point. In this metastable point, the vast majority of the folding specification doesn't really matter. Supersymmetry, if true, would be an example of such a latent part of the folding specification in our universe. Perhaps in our universe there is a fourth generation of particles that weighs as much as a small planet, we simply don't know, and so this fourth generation is free to mutate across our line of universes without affecting universe reproductive rate.

What this means is that the folding specification has "junk DNA" to work with. Universes aren't just doing some sort of gradient descent, sometimes a mutation will drop a previously latent structure down into the range where it actually affects how the universe functions.

Like suppose this fourth generation with particles the mass of planets had leptons that weighed as much as quarks. It wouldn't matter to us, but if a child universe happens to reduce the mass of fourth generation particles to be less than an up quark, suddenly out of nowhere you have fourth-generation protons that are lighter than first-generation ones but which need to interact with fouth-generation leptons that are much heavier than electrons for purposes of the weak nuclear force.
This would usually have a negative effect on universe reproductive capability, but sometimes a positive one.

How do you think I got my MSc? By admitting that the experiment I had spent over a year working on was kind of bad and fidgety and that the vague pattern we found in the data might as well be a measurement artifact or random chance when my professor said it was publishable quality?

Academia is fucked up. Incentives to embellish and gloss away are massive. $30k and the social capital of a MSc for me. Who knows what it is for them.

Though to be fair, I did walk away in disgust and they clearly aren't.

In this hypothesis, what happens when black holes merge?

Also, our universe is clearly not optimized to make them, if it were then every atom would have collapsed into a tiny black hole before any structures could form.

If you don't want people to commit fraud then make sure they can live comfortably without committing fraud. Ethics is for the hypocritical and the soon-to-be-poor.

I think you just defined metaphysics. It's really more philosophy than science.

This assumes that the laws of physics differ between the inside and outside of a black hole

I mean, right away, doesn't this necessarily have to be true? Doesn't known physics simply break down in a singularity? Hell, most math breaks down once you introduce the number infinity into equations.

But, at the same time, black holes also evaporate into hawking radiation, stuff does come out of them. Which implies that something is going on inside them.

So with those two things combined, doesn't that mean the laws of physics "must* differ inside black holes?

I need to get one of those theoretical physics jobs that just involves drinking a bunch of cough syrup and talking out of my ass instead of lots of math.

Dunno what field you were in, but my partner takes extra care to make sure her research is sound science, and her students work is also sound. I admit there is enormous pressure to publish results, but that doesn't mean you couldn't have framed your thesis differently, or come up with a new idea. Negative results are still results after all.

Hell, most math breaks down once you introduce the number infinity into equations

That's literally what an integral is. Super misleading way of putting it. Dividing by zero is the issue because it is undefined.

I think you don't know what metaphysics is.

From Wikipedia:

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic nature or most fundamental structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of human understanding.

It's literally more philosophy than science. It's philosophy of the physical world.

It was a bit of intentional hyperbole, but I mean, technically it wasn't even inaccurate, I did say "most".

i don't feel like this passes occam's razor, surely a much simpler yet equally functional hypothesis is that the laws of physics can change over time? E.g. if the big bang is a cyclic event, with the end of the universe being a big crunch that then rebounds into another big bang where physics is changed to some degree.

Then all the "just right" things we see are simply the result of selection bias: Obviously we live in a universe that is just right to support human life, if we didn't exist we wouldn't see anything!

The reason why you can’t live comfortably is because of the tremendous number of people who already committed fraud and/or are committing it right now. Don’t blame the way the world is for perpetuating its failings.

I mean, I can live comfortably. I said the experiment was fine. I have the degree and the considerable privileges that come with it.

But sure, I get what you mean. But I also "can't live comfortably" because humans aren't immortal so there aren't billions of ancestors with an incentive to make the world a better place indefinitely. Does that mean that when I die I am to blame for perpetuating the "world's failings"?

People have been looking at crimes and going "stop that" for millennia. They've even killed the perpetrators to ensure they never perpetuate crimes again. And yet crimes remained. Turns out that the forces perpetuating crime mostly aren't the crimes themselves.

I can't tell if you're an academic. If you're not, welcome to this corner of the real world. Shit sucks out there too. If you are, know that all that differentiates me from many of your peers is that I walked away. I'm an anarchist now. While you're angry at water for flowing downhill or humans for committing profitable fraud or whatever, I'm carving the mountain.

It's mostly helping homeless people get housing and food (in totally legal ways, of course, I wouldn't want to be unethical or cowardly), but I do hope to return to science at some point. Not under its flag, but with its successor's.

If the experiment was shoddy and I knew it, that would be all true. But reality doesn't stop existing just because it's immoral. You can say goodbye but I will still exist, and more importantly so will every corrupt academic who chose not to walk away. Mere outrage won't change that. Do you care to do something that will?