alt Hacker NewsI'm aware of the charge coming from quarks, but my point remains.
> you have to accept there will eventually be (hopefully simple) coincidences between certain fundamental values, no?
When the probability of coincidence is epsilon, then, no. Right now they are the same to 12 digits, but that undersells it, because that is just the trailing digits. There is nothing which says the leading digits must be the same, eg, one could be 10^30 times bigger than the other. Are you still going to just shrug and say "coincidence?"
That there are 26 fundamental constants and this one is just exactly the same is untenable.
If you imagine the universe is made of random real fundamental constants rather than random integer fundamental constants, then indeed there's no reason to expect such collisions. But if our universe starts from discrete foundations, then there may be no more satisfying explanation to this than there is to the question of, say, why the survival threshold and the reproduction threshold in Conway's Game of Life both involve the number 3. That's just how that universe is defined.