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Why anthropic reasoning cannot predict Lambda

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arxiv astro-ph/0607227 v2 pith:NWRUPNDO submitted 2006-07-11 astro-ph hep-th

Why anthropic reasoning cannot predict Lambda

classification astro-ph hep-th
keywords anthropicdifferentlambdavaluecannotexplainprobabilityreasoning
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an explicit example, we show that weighting different universes by the total number of possible observations leads to an extremely small probability for observing a value of Lambda equal to or greater than what we now measure. We conclude that anthropic reasoning within the framework of probability as frequency is ill-defined and that in the absence of a fundamental motivation for selecting one weighting scheme over another the anthropic principle cannot be used to explain the value of Lambda, nor, likely, any other physical parameters.

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    Anthropically selected string axion plus negative vacuum energy predicts a ~40% chance of the observed matter/dark-energy balance and an accelerating-thawing dark energy that current CMB+BAO+SN data prefer over ΛCDM at 2.7σ.