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From: eder@ssc-vax.UUCP (Dani Eder)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The Anthropic Principle
Message-ID: <1252@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-May-87 00:02:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.1252
Posted: Tue May 26 00:02:09 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 27-May-87 01:05:52 EDT
References: <16074@cca.CCA.COM>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Corp., Seattle WA
Lines: 40
Keywords: Anthropic Principle, Tippler, Cosmology, Fermi Silence
Summary: analogy with airplane passengers

In article <16074@cca.CCA.COM>, g-rh@cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter) writes:
> 
> Weak Anthropic Principle:  The observed values of all physical and comso-
> logical quantities are not equally probable but they take on values
> restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based
> life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for
> it to have already done so.
> 

     I work for the Boeing Company as an engineer (space transportation,
by the way) and hence read aerospace industry journals.  Because of that
I was aware that the industry average load factor (percentage of seats
on a flight occupied) for commercial airlines is very near 60%.  On the
other hand, on my business trips, the flights I was on seemed to be
much fuller than that on average.  In fact, quite a few flights were
100% full.  I began to wonder why I seemed to be defying the statistical
norms.  Eventually I discovered there is an observational self-selection
effect when the observer (me) is part of the experiment.

Imagine an airline that flies two types of routes with equal
frequency.  One type of route is always 100% full,while the
other type of route is always 20% full.  Thus the airline has a
average load factor of 60% overall, the industry norm.  Now if
a random passengers are queried on what type of flight he was on,
obviously 5/6 of the time thswer will be "100%" and 1/6
of the time the answer will be "20%".  The perceived load factor
from the passenger's point of view is then 86.667%.

What has allthis got to do with the weak anthropic principle?
The fact that we are 'part of the experiment' implies a similar
self selection effect.  It is most likely that we will find
ourselves in a location that is highly conducive to our being
there.  It is unlikely that we would find ourselves,say, near
the core of a quasar, or in some similar inhospitable location.
Even if the situation we find ourselves in is highly improbable
(location in galaxy, type of star, type of universe), it is
nonetheless much more probable that we will observe ouselves in
a situation where all the conditions are 'just right'    

Dani Eder/Advanced Space Transportation/Boeing/ssc-vax!eder