  The anthropic principle is based on the observation that, within narrow
bounds, the laws of physics are such as to have allowed the evolution of life.
The string theoretic approach to understanding this observation is based on the
expectation that the effective potential has an enormous number of local minima
with different particle masses and perhaps totally different fundamental
couplings and space time topology. The vast majority of these alternative
universes are totally inhospitable to life, having, for example, vacuum
energies near the natural (Planck) scale. The statistics, however, are assumed
to be such that a few of these local minima (and not more) have a low enough
vacuum energy and suitable other properties to support life. In the
inflationary era, the "multiverse" made successive transitions between the
available minima until arriving at our current state of low vacuum energy.
String theory, however, also suggests that the absolute minimum of the
effective potential is exactly supersymmetric. Questions then arise as to why
the inflationary era did not end by a transition to one of these, when will the
universe make the phase transition to the exactly supersymmetric ground state,
and what will be the properties of this final state.
