Speaker: Casey McCoy (UCSD) Date: Wed., May 20 Location: Ludwigstr. 31, ground floor, room 021 Time: 16:15 - 17:45 Title: Cosmological Probabilities: General Relativity and Statistical Mechanics Writ Large Abstract: Physicists and philosophers have occasionally advanced arguments concerning the probabilities of possible universes, based on, for example, the so-called Past Hypothesis and GHS measure from cosmology. Although it may seem dubious to treat the entire universe as a random event, one might suppose that these arguments may be justified by extrapolating successful applications of probability in physics, such as statistical mechanics, to the universe. I argue that these justifications, when based on statistical mechanical probabilities, fail to be adequate.