Talk:Lee Smolin

No natural selection?

"Thus the theory contains the evolutionary ideas of "reproduction" and "mutation" of universes, but has no direct analogue of natural selection."

Wtf? Of course it has! Nature favours the universes capable of producing black holes. When a universe produces many black holes, it gets many offsprings. If it is not capable of producing black holes, it has no offsprings. Of course this is natural selection.

Furthermore, if the universes capable of producing black holes are the ones capable of producing life, nature must favour universes capable of producing life. This makes life a propable event, and according to the anthropic principle, we must nescesarrily be where life is.

What do you mean by propable?137.205.183.109 (talk) 15:45, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, reading the definition in natural selection article, it only requires adaptive heritable traits becoming more common in a population over generations, which would happen if this were true. Difference is probably that universes are not mortal, they don't need to die off and hence nothing disappears completely from the population. I dare not edit it, however, for I have no idea how to phrase this succinctly. Aryah (talk) 06:43, 2 June 2010 (UTC)~

Being a "new expert" in evolutionary biology (night course (smile!)), I agree with above comments.

It definitely fulfills the categories of multiple offspring (with little energy consumption, viability of offspring, and their long life (relative to other population members). Idealist707 (talk) 20:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't the lack of competition for resources in this theory mean that it is not a form of natural selection? At least, not in the usual Darwinian sense. I don't believe this is mentioned in 'The Life of the Cosmos'. It would seem that any universe that was 'good enough' to reproduce would eventually produce an infinite number of daughter universes (barring statical bad luck). It wouldn't have to out-compete other universes (with different laws) that are even more fecund - though these would produce a 'larger infinity' (a 'faster' growing set) of descendants. 62.232.250.50 (talk) 11:44, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

No, someone already explained what selection requires, even linked the article... it's not like these universes are claimed to be living, acting things. Yet contra the article my understanding is the parallel is much stronger than a formal analog. It's one and the same fundamental process, or how many would there be? In the case of living things it just gets more complex, fans out, so there's other kind of selection, drift, etc. But the very cosmos (universes) itself being evolutionary is the whole point of the theory (book at least). Lee isn't much into sloppy metaphor. -62.214.249.120 (talk) 18:17, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Jewish

Nothing in the article backs up his presence in Jewish categories. Even the atheist thing is barely backed up (does not believing in a creator quite count?). I'm not suggesting these things are false, but they should appear in the article before the categories. 216.8.143.101 (talk) 20:57, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

You are right, there is no backup in the article, and putting him in a Jewish or atheist category is especially questionable (WP:BLPCAT). I have removed those categories, as well as ethnicity = Jewish. Of course, if some editors can show it's worth mentioning and have reliable sources, they can put "Jewish" back in. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:52, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

What was he doing between 1995 and 1999?

Dr. Universe (talk) 16:38, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

'Personal life' section

The second paragraph of the 'Personal life' section sounds like it was written by Smolin himself. Is this WP:AUTO? - Emil Sayahi (talk) 00:43, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

inaccurate source for views on creator

"The Quotable Atheist" is not a reliable source. It is a collection of hundreds of quotes for people who may or may not be atheists. The quotes are out of context and inaccurate. The sentence that uses this as a source should be deleted. ~2026-19294-76 (talk) 21:14, 28 March 2026 (UTC)