Misanthropic Me
Bee has a long thoughtful post on various versions of the Anthropic Principle, with many comments. Lubos has another, much longer, and related post on what kind of universe is necessary for life. Unfortunately I didn't get much out of either one, since my brain shuts off when I read (or hear) the phrase "Anthropic Principle."
Basic statistical mechanics indicates that if our universe started from a random state, it is more likely that our present ideas of the history of the Universe, the Earth, and even ourselves, is more likely to be an illusion based on chance alignments of molecules than real. It's more likely that those memory traces in your brain (and the rest of you) are a chance fluctuation than real records of your history (see, for example, Brian Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos, pg. 160 ff.
In such a universe it's very hard for me to believe anthropic considerations are likely to help us make sense of the whole thing. It seems very unlikely that there was anything ineluctable about the evolution of the human race here on Earth, so it's also possible that our universe and its laws somehow evolved. If, to abuse Einstein's phrase, God had some choice in the design of the universe, I don't see how the AP helps us understand it.
Basic statistical mechanics indicates that if our universe started from a random state, it is more likely that our present ideas of the history of the Universe, the Earth, and even ourselves, is more likely to be an illusion based on chance alignments of molecules than real. It's more likely that those memory traces in your brain (and the rest of you) are a chance fluctuation than real records of your history (see, for example, Brian Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos, pg. 160 ff.
In such a universe it's very hard for me to believe anthropic considerations are likely to help us make sense of the whole thing. It seems very unlikely that there was anything ineluctable about the evolution of the human race here on Earth, so it's also possible that our universe and its laws somehow evolved. If, to abuse Einstein's phrase, God had some choice in the design of the universe, I don't see how the AP helps us understand it.