Reply #30: Perhaps the universe is hard-wired for sentient conscious beings

[WillieWoohah]

Not necessarily humans.

If you consider the infinity of possible universes that could exist (without leading to logical contradictions), only a small subset of those would actually give rise to some kind of conscious sentient beings.

It's kind of a grander version of "if a tree falls in a forest and no-ones around, would it make a noise". If a universe came into being and never produced conscious life (e.g. because the gravitational constant was too weak and stars, planets etc never formed), would it really exist?

The problem I have with the Anthropic Principle is that in order for the universe to come into being, it needs to go through several billion years of galaxy/star/planet formation, evolution yada yada yada in order for conscious sentient life to arise, during which time it doesn't really exist, except in a kind of potential sense. This just seems bogus to me.