The first Sydney Foundations of Physics seminar of the year will be held on Thursday 6th March at 11:30am. Feraz Azhar from the Unit for HPS, University at Sydney will speak about prediction and typicality in multiverse cosmology - details below.
____________________________ Speaker. Feraz Azhar (Sydney) Title. “Prediction and typicality in multiverse cosmology.” Abstract. In the general context of multiverse cosmology, I investigate the efficacy of top-down anthropic reasoning based on the weak anthropic principle. I argue contrary to recent claims that it is not clear one can either dispense with notions of typicality altogether or presume typicality, in comparing resulting probability distributions with observations. I show in a top-down setting related to dark matter, that assumptions about typicality can significantly affect predictions, thereby providing a sense of how errors in reasoning regarding typicality translate to errors in the assessment of predictive power. I argue in favour of the explicit inclusion of a range of typicality measures in schemes invoking anthropic reasoning, with a view to extracting predictions from multiverse scenarios. Link to article abstract: http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/31/3/035005/article Time. Thursday 6th March, 11:30-13:00. Location. Muniment Room S401, Main Quad - A14, University of Sydney. ___________________________ All are welcome! Please note that we are seeking speakers for future seminars - any area related to foundational concepts in physics (e.g. space, time, matter, motion, probability, measurement, etc.) is welcome, whether theoretical, philosophical or methodological. If you'd like to give a talk, or know of any future visitors who would like to give a talk, please contact me at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. The schedule for SydFoP talks is available here: http://newagendasstudyoftime.wordpress.com/sydfop/ Details for how to subscribe to the SydFoP mailing list are here: http://lists.arts.usyd.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/sydfop All the best Matt __________________________________________ DR MATT FARR | Postdoctoral Research Fellow New Agendas for the Study of Time<http://newagendasstudyoftime.wordpress.com/> | Centre for Time School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Room N494 | Quadrangle A14 University of Sydney | NSW | 2006 T +61 2 9114 0633<tel:%2B61%202%209114%200633> | F +61 2 9351 3918<tel:%2B61%202%209351%203918> E [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> W mattfarr.co.uk<http://mattfarr.co.uk/>
_______________________________________________ SydPhil mailing list: http://bit.ly/sydphil New archive: http://bit.ly/SydPhilArchive To UNSUBSCRIBE, change your MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS, find ANSWERS TO COMMON PROBLEMS, or visit our ONLINE ARCHIVES, please go to the LIST INFORMATION PAGE: http://bit.ly/sydphil ... and if you can't get to that page, try the EMERGENCY PAGE: http://bit.ly/SydPhilEmergency
