Why does a non uniform distribution often seem to “beg for an explanation”?

Question

Take for example the proposed fine tuning of the universe. Because there are certain constants proposed to be fine tuned for life, some postulate the existence of a multiverse with constants ranging through all possible values. This seems intuitive.

But why is this an explanation that is more intuitive than a multiverse that say has trillions of universes that all support life with the exact same constant values that we have in this universe? This concept seems to beg for an explanation. One can claim that it seems unintuitive and less amenable to “blind/chancy” forces because the constants being the same in all universes seems to require a reason for being so.

But why doesn’t a uniform multiverse beg for an explanation? More generally, why doesn’t a uniform distribution of values in any context require a reason for being so? It seems to me that something about values obeying a uniform distribution is enough to be intuitive and thus require no further explanation whereas values obeying a non uniform distribution may indicate evidence of design, or if not design, beg for a non design explanation such as a regularity or law in nature.

Now, this kind of design based thinking may be justified in the cases of a coin continually landing on heads or seeing the same lottery winner win each time. But in each of these cases, we have additional evidence suggesting both the existence of riggers or cheaters and the existence of incentives to both rig a coin or cheat in a lottery respectively.

Even in cases of non uniform distributions that don’t seem to indicate design, such as pebbles being ordered by size on a beach, it is only because we have an explanation based on physical laws that allow us to conclude that this arrangement of pebbles didn’t happen “blindly” or ”haphazardly”.

Without this additional evidence, is there anything fundamental or inherent in a non uniform distribution of values that requires or needs an explanation? Can a non uniform distribution of values “just be so”?

Answer 1

You refer several times to intuition. Timothy Williamson argues that intuition has no special role in philosophy. In my view, the multiverse hypothesis is merely a thought experiment. So, if you are referring to non-uniform distribution within the one universe that we know, I will attempt an answer. I have argued elsewhere that there may have been necessity about the existence of the universe. In the panpsychist view, the fundamental stuff of the universe is matter-consciousness. The conscious universe may have decided to exist. Any deviation from a uniform distribution stems from that moment of initiation.

Answer 2

You need to refine your terminology to get a useful answer, as follows.

Mathematically, a uniform distribution assigns the same probability of occurrence to all different possible values within a specified range. So, rather than looking like a bell curve (for example), the uniform distribution looks like a rectangle.

Now a uniform distribution of a variable within a fixed range is a classic hallmark of outside intervention: within descriptive statistics, there is no naturally-occurring, randomly-driven process which yields a rectangular distribution shape. In a factory, for example, humans sort and select the members of the population to "fill" the variable range with as many items as possible, for a variety of reasons, so a uniform distribution is taken as a smoking gun of intervention.

In fact, in a factory containing a concatenated variety of outcomes where each is individually subject to the central limit theorem, any non-gaussian distribution is taken as evidence of what my favorite industrial statistician called "the hand of man".