February 11, 2025 - Reading time: 8 minutes

YouTube video https://youtu.be/15TLFPWbt2E?si=aT996qTNywNZvvcT

You are born. You open your eyes, and what you see is this world - light, complexity, and others who care for you. Later in life, you realize one thing: you can exist only in this Universe. All its parameters and laws are precisely tuned for complex life. You may also conclude that this extraordinary fine-tuning is merely an observation bias - you cannot exist in other universes that are hostile to life.

Let's simplify this for you. Imagine this: It is dark. You have no sense of time, no space. You feel nothing. You have no prior memory, only a few basic concepts. Then, all of a sudden, a door slowly begins to open in front of you. The speed at which it opens gives you your first measure of time.

You step into the room and see an astonishing sight. The room is illuminated by a light source that seems to come from nowhere. In the center of the floor, a spinning needle is perfectly balanced on its tip - an incredibly unstable arrangement. But there's more: a string is attached to both the needle and the door. As the needle rotates, it pulls the door open, allowing you to enter.

You realize that the only reason you witness this remarkable equilibrium is that it opened the door, letting you in to see it. Without this improbable mechanism, you would have remained forever in darkness, without any sense of time or space. We do not know what stabilizes the needle or what sets it spinning. Nor do we know who - or what - designed the intricate mechanism with the string wrapped around it. And then, there is the light, illuminating this complex arrangement and allowing you to perceive it.

There are other mysterious structures in the room whose existence has nothing to do with the spinning needle opening the room. They have different shapes, yet they fit together in an astonishingly precise way. They are beyond any possible manipulation by beings like yourself who may have entered this room before.

This unstable, spinning needle is an analogy for the Higgs boson, discovered at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Its mass is finely tuned to an extraordinary degree, bringing our world into being. Like the needle balancing on its tip, the properties of the Higgs boson appear to be precisely tuned. The Higgs boson gives mass to all other elementary particles. In turn, all such fundamental particles possess properties arranged with unimaginable precision, making this Universe possible.

But let's return to our example of the door being opened by a balancing needle. If you are a materialist, you might argue that the only reason you observe this unlikely mechanism is due to several improbable factors - such as the balancing needle and the wrapped string, with one end connected to the door handle. It is a combination of elements that are precisely aligned with each other to perform a meaningful operation. If there were only a balancing needle or just an unconnected string, you would never enter the room.

Out of an infinite number of possible rooms with closed doors, it is this particular mechanism that allows the door to open, revealing what lies inside. The door opens, and only then can you witness the room with this mechanism.

In philosophy, this idea aligns with the anthropic principle: you are here to observe this finely tuned universe precisely because it allows for your existence. In other possible universes, complex life would not arise at all. This is a naturalistic view.

But there is another perspective - one that suggests this entire mechanism was deliberately crafted to open the door and let you in. Some believe the Universe itself was intelligently designed.

There is also a spectrum of opinions between these two extremes. But consider this:

If you assume an infinite number of unobserved rooms, you must also assume an infinite number of ways in which doors can open. Some doors might open too quickly for you to enter or perceive what causes their movement. Others might swing wildly, never settling. Some doors may remain open permanently, yet without light, their contents remain unknowable. Others may be opened using mechanisms that self-assemble from chaos, allowing you to walk inside, but what you find in the room may reveal something that cannot be recognized as order or beauty.

The assumption about an infinite number of unknowable universes is not scientific. It never was. As it was said by Stanislaw Lem one cannot explain one unknown through another unknown since it is a vicious circle in logic.

Yet, for the sake of argument, let us accept the multiverse hypothesis. If there is an infinite number of universes, then the number of potential ways for you to exist is also infinite. You can only emerge in universes that support life, but not necessarily in those that exhibit order and patterns unrelated to your presence. In fact, among all universes stable enough for complex life to arise, the probability of finding yourself in one that reveals regularities and patterns that are not necessary conditions for life is virtually zero. And yet, here you are.

Let us use our white-room analogy. Among the infinite number of doors that can be opened for you - since extraordinary mechanisms in these rooms allow you to enter, giving you enough time to observe and comprehend - you appear in a special room. You find yourself in a space filled with other unrelated yet precisely fitting elements, completely unconnected to the door-opening process. This is not the work of chaos randomly assembling the door-opening mechanism.

Let's clarify this last point: in our Universe, we observe numerous cosmic coincidences that have no direct relevance to the emergence of complex life. Many aspects of reality are exquisitely ordered and logically arranged without being necessary for the formation of stars, planets, or living beings. The Golden Ratio (~1.618), Fibonacci Sequence, the Symmetry Principle and many more regularities and patterns are embedded in the structure of the Universe, underlying the mathematical harmony of this world.

Let's give more examples. Solar eclipses are possible only because of an odd coincidence: the Moon and the Sun appear nearly the same size in the sky due to a precise ratio of their distances and diameters. Similarly, the planets in our Solar System follow a pattern where each planet is roughly twice as far from the Sun as the one before. The beauty and logic of the underlying mathematical laws are not prerequisites for life to exist - yet they are embedded in the very foundation of this universe. We discover these simple abstract ideas when doing science.

Our universe is not merely a product of randomness, nor is it solely the result of selection bias or the observer effect. It is a realm of unexpected order and beauty - because its foundation is information, not matter and energy. This world is not just finely tuned for the emergence of complex molecules and life - it is rich with structures, phenomena, and mathematical patterns that interlock in ways that extend far beyond what is necessary for life to exist. And even further beyond what is required for you to be here - because you are a part of all of this.

You were never in timeless darkness, in front of this door, outside that room with the balancing needle.

by S.V.Chekanov

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This is a full transcript of the YouTube video https://youtu.be/15TLFPWbt2E?si=aT996qTNywNZvvcT created using parts of the book "The Designed World of Information: Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond", by Dr. Sergei V. Chekanov, 466 pages, ISBN: 9798990642836; Hardcover 9798990642843, eBook ISBN 9798990642829; Book webpage: https://ermislean.org/designed-world/