Fine-Tuned Mind Projection

So any universe that produces life will also produce iPads? I find that counter-intuitive.

That's logically different from what I said. I think my sentence was logically equivalent to (L -> C) & (I -> C) (life exists implies certain conditions must exist, and iPads exist means those same conditions must exist). I interpret what you say as L -> I (if life, then iPads), which you can't prove from my premises.

For a natural language example, if I play Civilization IV, I must own a computer, and if I play Team Fortress II I must own a computer, but it's not necessarily true that if I play Civilization IV, I must also play Team Fortress II. So "the conditions necessary for Civilization IV are also necessary for Team Fortress II", but not "Anyone who plays Civilization IV also plays Team Fortress II".

I don't think interesting is another word for valuable in this context. Consider a bag of balls, 999,999 of which are blue and one of which is red. I reach into the bag blindfolded and pick the one red ball. This is surprising! It's not that the red ball is more valuable than me to the blue balls. I may not have cared about the color of the balls at all before picking one. But it's interesting, because the red ball is quite different from all the other balls and it's surprising that I chose the one unique one.

(in Bayesian terms, any theory that says there's some correlation between the color of a ball and its likelihood of getting picked is suddenly going to have a huge advantage over theories that ball-picking is a random process, or sorted by some non-color variable like tiny weight differences).

Suppose (and I am making this up because I don't remember the exact fine tuning argument, but I think it is loyal to the spirit of the original) that there are a million possible different weights for the proton, and that all of those weights except 5,000 units result in protons sitting around doing nothing and the Universe remaining a bunch of disconnected protons, but that weight 5,000 uniquely allows the formation of atoms. Suppose also that there is nothing to distinguish the other 999,999 possible proton weights from one another; ie weight 10,000 doesn't allow some different form of atom or something, it's either atoms or nothing. And suppose our universe has proton weight of 5,000 units.

This is the same scenario as reaching into the bag of 999,999 blue balls and one red ball, and picking out the red ball. You may not have cared what color the ball was before you reached in and picked it, but because there is a co-incidence between two very rare properties (redness and getting picked-ness), you now have evidence supporting a theory that red balls are more likely to get picked.

I think your argument is that you only became interested in red after you saw it was the red ball you picked, so that doesn't count. But if it's really 999,999 blue balls and one red one, and that's the only difference, I think you don't risk too much hindsight bias in picking out color as a relevant variable. Likewise, 999,999 universes where protons sit around doing nothing for a few trillion years, versus ours, makes ours look interesting even before talking about its value.

You and Nick Tarleton are both correct. Life is evidence for life-creating gods, but our prior for life-creating gods is so low that we still aren't compelled to anticipate their existence.

in the Texas Sharpshooter example, is shooting a bunch of holes in a wall evidence that the shooter wanted to shoot these exact holes?

The difference is that we know bullet-holes come from people shooting guns, we've seen that happen many times, and so in this particular instance we can conclude there was a sharpshooter before we start wondering about his intentions. Whereas there's only one universe, and no regularity of the kind 'when you see a universe, there was a god who created it and usually intended it to be this way'.