The Misanthropic Principle

V. Gates, M. Roachcock, E. Kangaroo, and W.C. Gall

Anthropillogical Institute of New York

ABSTRACT: Recently the Anthropic Principle has been misapplied, telling more about the people who try to apply it than its supposed application to the rest of the world.

Contents

This paper is very short, yet not as short as some people's attention spans, so we include a Table of Contents to take you directly to whatever section you're interested in. It also allows us to make the paper a little longer.

1. Contents		you're already there
2. Introduction		look down a little
3. Misdirection		just a page away
4. String theory		OK, click on the link, lazy
5. Cosmology		the link is on the left
6. Concussions		no, your other left
7. Glossary		at the end, obviously

This paper is so famous, it needs no

Introduction

There is some confusion¹ about the definition of the Anthropic Principle. Basically, it's the observation that certain properties of our "immediate" environment follow from our very existence.² The most primitive example would be Descartes' famous

I think, therefore I am.³

Recently this principle has been applied to astronomy. A proper example is

1. There's lots of water on Earth.
2. There isn't a whole lot of water on any other planet I've seen (or star, for that matter).
3. Therefore, the fact that I see water on Earth is just because I wouldn't want to live here otherwise, as the real estate values would be too low.

An inappropriate use of this principle would be

1. Water is wet on Earth.
2. On some planet I can't possibly ever see, water is not wet.
3. Therefore, the fact that I find water on Earth to be wet is just because I wouldn't be able to wash otherwise.

Or as Descartes might put it,

I think, therefore I am wet.

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• ¹ Generally, there is a lot of confusion. This makes it hard to distinguish the present confusion from the rest. Of course, this just leads to more confusion. In that regard, this footnote hasn't really helped very much. Sorry.
• ² This should not be confused with
  • the Anthropoid Principle: the statement that the nature of the world as we know it is due to the existence of monkeys,
  • the Arthropod Principle: the same but for bugs,
  • the Anthophilous Principle: for flowers.
• ³ A corollary is "I think I am thinking, therefore I think I am."

Misdirection

Of course, the latter type of argument carries a hidden assumption. Much worse than that, it actually carries a hidden argument. This hidden argument we call⁴ the Misanthropic Principle. It goes something like this⁵:

1. I can't solve this problem.
2. Therefore, you can't solve this problem.
3. Hence, this problem can't be solved.
4. So, it's got to be just dumb luck.

The basic idea is clearly, "How dare you try to tell me that my theory has been unsuccessful in predicting this experimental result, when the fact that my theory doesn't imply this result obviously proves it can't be predicted!" Some time in the past, a similar widely accepted idea was the Anthropocentric Principle, which led to the idea that the Earth must be the center of the Universe (geocentrism), since that's where people are. Eventually this was disproven by monkeys living on the Sun.

Interestingly, the Misanthropic Principle can be applied to experiment as well as to theory:

1. I can't see anything reasonable, just this highly unlikely coincidence.
2. We couldn't have made any systematic errors, we just made the same assumptions everybody's been making all along.
3. So, it's got to be just dumb luck.

For example, astronomers once concluded that the Milky Way was the center of the Universe, since it was 10 times larger than all the other galaxies, until Hubble realized he was missing a "0".

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• ⁴ We call a lot of things, as you may have noticed from other articles in this series.
• ⁵ The step that relates the first 2 statements is actually a corollary of the Sour Grapes argument. The argument encompassing the first 3 statements is often used independently, generally by referees for journals.

String theory

Originally⁶ it was thought that there were 5 string theories. Then it was realized that there is only 1 M theory. However, there appeared to be an infinite number of compactifications to 4 dimensions. Later, a more careful estimate gave only 10⁵⁰⁰. Recently it was realized, based on the (mis)anthropic principle, that only 1 billionth of these can accomodate the Standard SuperModel. This reduces the number of relevant compactifications to a mere 10⁴⁹¹.

This application of the misanthropic principle is called the Landscape. The landscape is almost infinite, but it is also rather barren (except for a few gerbes), so if you are nearsighted enough it may seem that there are not too many possibilities around.

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• ⁶ "Originally" means around the time of the Heterotic String Revolution, not to be confused with the slightly earlier Superstring Revolution.
• ⁵⁰⁰ No, it's really an exponent, not a footnote. You don't seriously think there could realistically be 500 footnotes, do you?
• ⁴⁹¹ Still an exponent, though 491 seems a much more reasonable number of footnotes.

Cosmology

Cosmology is the opposite of string theory: Instead of starting with 10 or 11 dimensions, and compactifying most of them, you start with no dimensions (except time), and the Big Bang uncompactifies 3 of them. The major problems are then:

1. When are the other 6 or 7 going to come out, too?
2. If they aren't, then why did the original 3 in the first place?

Of course, string theory has the same problem, but at least in string theory, when you compactify a dimension, it stays compactified. So you can try combining string theory with cosmology, hoping their problems will cancel each other out. But instead they combine into one big problem, namely,

What made me think this was a good idea in the first place?

Now it's time to apply the misanthropic principle. There has been some work in this area⁷, trying to prove people can't exist in 2 spatial dimensions; unfortunately, it seems they can, even if they are a bit disgusting⁸. And there is no proof people can't exist in more than 3 spatial dimensions.

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• ⁷ A. Square, Flatland (1884)
• ⁸ 2 spatial dimensions could thus be eliminated on the basis of the Anthropomorphic Principle.

Concussions

Finally, we would like to summarize our results, but all of this⁹ has given us a headache¹⁰. We'll come back to it after we finish teaching:

Schedule
1st Chern class	9:35-10:30
2nd Chern class	10:40-11:35

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• ⁹ discuss, from Latin dis- ‘apart’ + quatere ‘shake’
• ¹⁰ concuss, from Latin con- ‘together’ + quatere ‘shake’

Glossary

Most of these terms have already been defined in the text, but we provide all their homographic definitions here for purposes of variety.

• Anthophilous Principle: something that appears in the dictionary next to "anthropic"
• Anthropic Principle: principle of last resort
• Anthropocentric Principle: what that principle really stands for
• Anthropoid Principle: invented by monkeys on typewriters
• Anthropomorphic Principle: looks like a principle
• Arthropod Principle: I always get those confused
• geocentrism: theory that the Earth has a creamy center
• gerbe: a sheaf of categories that burrows in arid areas
• Landscape: the orientation of your monitor
• Misanthropic Principle: the title of this paper!
• Standard SuperModel (SSM): prettiest generalization of accepted particle theory