Lucky to be alive

[quadrille]

No, I was not just in a serious accident.

I\'m thinking in much more general terms, ie. I\'m lucky to exist, and that goes for all of you guys too! Think about it, what are the odds of you (yes YOU) even existing? They are infinitely small. Human comprehension ability cannot even begin to understand how unlikely it is for a particular individual to exist. Check this out:

Link

I\'ve been thinking alot about this stuff recently (actually for the last few years). For me it\'s not just a silly mathematical exercise, it\'s a calculation that rocks the my entire view of the world. I CANNOT LOGICALLY EXIST! It\'s impossible. It\'s like winning the lotto every day for your entire life. No, it\'s like winning every lotto ever held in the entire world (in fact even that is most likely probable in comparison).

I think I might be going insane thinking too much about this. I consider myself an atheist, yet in this case science fails to provide a believable explanation. I can accept that other individuals exist, but why me?? Is there a reason after all?

How does everyone else relate to this?

Sorry if this seemed like a confused rambling, but I had to get it off my chest.

 

[Ritual]

You could also argue that from your own point of view the probability that YOU exist is 100%! If you didn\'t exist then you wouldn\'t be around to know that you didn\'t exist.

 

[matty1001]

Killer sperm :twisted:

 

[quadrille]

Originally posted by Ritual
You could also argue that from your own point of view the probability that YOU exist is 100%! If you didn\'t exist then you wouldn\'t be around to know that you didn\'t exist.

But that is off the point. Why did I end up here in the first place? It shouldn\'t have been possible.

 

[AinuLainour]

More fine work from us BCer\'s .

That is really inspiring to know... All I can say is wow. Wow. :bouncy:

 

[No Such Agency]

As Ritual pointed out, the Weak Anthropic Principle comes into play here. The probability of you existing is 100%, because no matter who \"you\" is, \"you\" is the one doing the asking.

The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so.’Barrow and Tipler, 1986, 16

In other words, our existence as observers functions as a cosmological selection effect. There can be no observations without observers. Our observations must satisfy the conditions necessary for our existence.
- http://www.meta-library.net/ghc-bb/wap-frame.html

And no, science cannot tell you \"why\" you are here. Frankly, we don\'t care why YOU are here. Most of US think WE are here to get drunk whenever possible and maybe get a date or six with that sexy woman who runs the flow cytometer

 

[Hinton]

We don\'t exist. We\'re just the dream of the dolphin.

After all of the things I\'ve done in my life, the things that should have killed me (several times over), I\'m lucky to still be alive.

 

[lono]

But am I lucky to be alive? You, or at least the figures that you are linking to, make the assumption that of all the sperm that fertilised the egg, the one that made me was the golden ticket. What if the sperm just behind it had dipped at the line and done the business instead? Would I still be me? Would I still be writing this? Would I be a multi-millionaire? Would I be completely broke? Could I go out tomorrow and murder a load of people? If I did would I still be lucky to be alive? Would I rather I was dead? Should I care? Am I overthinking something that was supposed to be generally uplifting?

I think what I\'m trying to say is I agree with Ritual and NSA (and Popeye) - I am what I am, so that\'d make it 100% probability of me being alive... unless the article I read in New Scientist a while back is right and we are all in a computer simulation, and it did make a scarily convincing argument!

 

[Sand Rat]

Consider this -

Cogito Ergo Est.

I think, therefore I am.

I prefer

I think, therefore you are.lol

 

[AinuLainour]

I admit it.. I\'ve been thinking a lot about life, death, and meaning lately. What I\'ve seen in this one short thread through humour, philosophy, mathematics, and science is more comforting than anything.

 

[quadrille]

Originally posted by lono
But am I lucky to be alive? You, or at least the figures that you are linking to, make the assumption that of all the sperm that fertilised the egg, the one that made me was the golden ticket. What if the sperm just behind it had dipped at the line and done the business instead? Would I still be me? Would I still be writing this? Would I be a multi-millionaire? Would I be completely broke? Could I go out tomorrow and murder a load of people? If I did would I still be lucky to be alive? Would I rather I was dead? Should I care? Am I overthinking something that was supposed to be generally uplifting?

Every \"egg getter sperm\" carries the potential for a unique individual. That is to say, if another sperm would have \"won\", you wouldn\'t be you (ie. you wouldn\'t exist). Of course there would be someone else instead, not unlikely quite similar to you. But not you. Compare it to twins: similar to each other; yeah, but not the same person.

It wasn\'t really supposed to be uplifting, personally I find it thought-provoking in the extreme but neither generally uplifting nor depressing. A bit scary though, in a way.

On a side note I wouldn\'t mind hearing that argument

It\'s not that I doubt the fact that I exist, that this the real world etc. It\'s rather the scope of the improbability of me being, literally, me (instead of one of the other billions of billions of possible candidates) I fail to grasp. It denies all reason! I can\'t help it: the more I think about it the less sense it makes. I guess, as NSA points out, trying not to think about it at all is the best thing to do.

But, though this may sound pretentious, at the same time isn\'t that denying a very important aspect of what makes us human? A trait not shared by any other species we\'re aware of: the very ability to raise questions about our own existence?

 

[Tony Manero]

That\'s why every sperm is sacred! lollollol:innocent:

 

[Sand Rat]

Hmm -

Nature vs Nurture could also play a part in you.

Are you who and what you are because of your genes or because of how you are raised?

Studies (and I will admit to being a bit behind on the liturature) have supported both, so . . . .

 

[Arkzein]

So the chances are extremely small, still means there has to be a \"winner\" be it some other egg or sperm. Just got lucky it was you. What always makes my mind boggle a bit is what if it had been the same egg with different sperm, or the same sperm with a different egg. Which would have been \"you\", especially with both happened. (Ie same sperm different egg and same egg different sperm, two, but which would have \"your\" consciousness). Even looking at yourself as just a mass of chemicals and such firing away it\'s hard to get your head round that.

Sure it would have been someone different in looks/DNA etc. but does that mean you\'d just be different.... or never exist at all. (That\'s another thing I can\'t get my head around, if nothing is after death, or you were never born, and you just don\'t exist... too hard to imagine because you have to exist to try and think about it... bah).

Then you can always think like the above replys, it isn\'t meant to be solved, can\'t perhaps. You exist, end of.

All over my head this really, only time it\'s worth thinking about is over a pint or ten when you solve the profound nature of the universe, and all the problems in the world, with a few mates..... but can\'t ever seem to recall your findings the next day.

 

[generulpoleaxe]

follow my philosophy,



shit happens.
then with a shrug of your shoulders, you can carry on as normal.

 

[Ritual]

Another thing is that what\'s \"you\" is also a product of the environment you have grown up in, events that happened to you, experiences etc. It\'s not all just a matter of a sperm and an egg.

 

[Naukhel]

Wow.

I bucked the odds even more than the average.

My mother miscarried a baby that was due to be born in early \'71 in its 6th month of term.

I was born mid-July of \'71. Had she carried that other baby to full term, then the me that is me would have been impossible, because conception would have been delayed by months, if not more than a year. If it ever happened at all....

If we\'re all here for some specific purpose, then mine must be a big one, because someone else got bumped aside so that I could be here.

Scary, eh?

 

[Brimshack]

This is sleight of hand mathematics. All well and good for a moment, but the real lesson here is to be careful how you frame a question in the first place.

If you drop a coin randomly on a football field (American, not one of them ferrin footballl fields), the odds that it will land on any particular yard line are 1 in a 100. yet, the odds that it would land on some designated place in the field are 100%. Break it down to feet 1 in 300 and 100%. Square Inches, and we begin to lose track, now factor in the odds that the image on the coin would be oriented at such and such an angle with respect to say the home team side of the 50 yard line, 360 degrees, but why stop there, get it down to fractions of degrees. Calculate the odds that it would bounce exactly twice before settling, etc. Multiply this by the odds that the randomly seclected coin would be from the particular year in question, have just so many knicks on it, etc. You can keep going with this very simple event to you get the odds as low as you care to keep track, but the odds of it landing some place are still 100%. Likewise, I could flip a coin a hundred times and marvel at the unlikelyhood of the exact sequence of results, but it isn\'t really amazing odds unless the significance of that sequence is determined beforehand.

You\'re looking back on a statistic, which is generating a misplaced concretism. Before you are conceived, there is no you to either be or not be. So, there is no subject upon which to base the odds of it being or ot being. Someone or something is going to be conceived under the right circumstances. That is happens to be you is no more nor less fortunate than it would have been had a boy named Eddie or a girl with a really big toe issued forth from your mother. The odds are only amazing if we project the end result of the event back into the beginning.

To this, I would add:

1) Being an Atheist does not imply in any way shape or form that one must have an explanation for everything. This is particularly true of pseudo problems such as the one you have described.

2) You have purported to describe long odds, perhaps even astoundingly long odds. You have most definitely not shown your own existence to be impossible, as you term it. For that, try reading Hume.

3) Conversely, we could follow the logic, and mourn for the nearly infinite number of possible beings that could have been, had it not been for you or I. If we are miracles, then by the same token Eddie and the big toed girl are tragedies. Should we not mourn, not just for them but for their children and grandchildren too? Perhaps we should curse our own existence as a blight on the mind boggling number of possible lives we have cancelled simply by being conceived in the first place. Hell, we should be locked up.

 

[funnymouth]

from an evolutionary standpoint.



you have existed as a continuously living organism since self replicating systems came in to existence on this planet. you (as a being which traces its existance as a chain of living beings back to the dawn of life), quite simly put, kick ass. thats right, the temporal hyber-being that is you and all of your preceding forms, have competed, clawed, eaten, and f**ked your way to the top, my friend.

bacterial conjugation (sex for prokaryotes).

it \'aint all chance, skill is an important factor.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Originally posted by quadrille
No, I was not just in a serious accident.
Glad to hear that.
From the title I thought you\'d just walked away from one.

I\'m thinking in much more general terms, ie. I\'m lucky to exist, and that goes for all of you guys too! ..............
Sorry if this seemed like a confused rambling, but I had to get it off my chest.

All that we are and all that we seem, is simply but a dream, within a dream.
Edgar Allen Poe.

There\'s as much rationality about our developing via pure mathematical chance as there is about our existing on the disk of a planet supported on the backs of four (or is it Five?) Giant Elephants standing on the back of the Turtle A\'Tuin which swims across the blackness of space.

That fact that we are here and can raise questions like this is enough for me.

Besides it\'s quite obvious that if you were amongst the brush lickers you\'d have learned true enlightenment.