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195 Mind-Stretcher. Strong or Final Anthropic Principles have profound implications for the probability of contact. As Mauldin pointed out, Barrow and Tipler’s version of the Final Anthropic Principle is surely not limited to humans, but should apply to all intelligent life. If the misnamed “anthropic” principle were firmly established, it would constitute a general proof that life must arise nearly everywhere to justify the universe existing.” Others have been harshly critical of anthropic ideas. Theorist David Gross argued that anthropic reasoning is both defeatist and dangerous— defeatist because it suggests that a more scientific explanation can never be found, and dangerous because it plays into the hands of “intelligent design” supporters who believe that the universe was custom-made for human beings by a benevolent God. “It smells of religion,” he said, “and like religion, it can’t be disproved.”*” Physicists Alan Guth and David Kaiser came to a different conclusion. Although the anthropic principle might sound patently religious in some contexts, the combination of inflationary cosmology and the landscape of string theory gives that principle a scientifically viable framework. If future research supports the idea of a multiverse, Rees and Livio argued, anthropic arguments will offer the only “explanation” that we will ever have for some features of our universe.” Aveni saw the anthropic cosmological principle as one of the latest attempts to restore actor—spectator interaction to the whole Earth, to the solar system, even to the universe.» It raises the status of human beings, and implies that they may have an important future. More attention will be paid to the anthropic approach if the search for alien intelligence continues for a long time without success.** Widespread acceptance of anthropic principles could reverse the long decline of anthropocentrism. Several theorists have proposed that our universe—and perhaps others— reproduce themselves. Linde, for example, envisioned a cosmos that repli- cates itself into an infinite number of baby universes with different laws of physics. This implies the existence of a vast plenitude of universes that predate and postdate our own. In cosmologist Lee Smolin’s vision, new baby universes are born in the hearts of black holes. A natural selection process favors the reproduction of universes adept at creating those holes, and thus baby universes. The appearance of a life-friendly universe would be merely a secondary con- sequence of reproduction.** Self-reproducing Universes Self-reproducing Universes