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Join kingbob in the wormhole
Posted on 4/21/16 at 10:56 am
Posted on 4/21/16 at 10:56 am
I have a thought for you to think. It's about figuring out how lucky you and I are to be here, in this place and at this time.
When I was a kid, I used to think about things like "What if my mom and dad didn't have sex the night I was conceived?" What if dad came home late and nodded off watching tv and called it a night instead. Or if my mom had gotten a phone call and had to leave because something had come up. Anything at all. What if my dad had jerked off in the shower that morning before work instead of successfully impregnating my mother with me that night?
I was trying to put into perspective how lucky I had to have been to be alive.
Let's go back a few generations and look at how many people are at play here in order for you to have been born. It's important to keep the math straight
-You have 2 parents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 4 grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 8 great grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 16 great, great (2 greats) grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 32 great, great, great (3 greats) grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 64 great, great, great, great (4 greats) grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 128 great, great, great, great, great (5 greats) grandparents.
So when you're talking about your great, great, great, great, great (5 greats) grandparents, you're talking about 128 people!
What if a single one of those 128 (great x 5) people had something different happen, any variable the day they conceived your great x 4 grandparents. Any of them. Just one of them, they wipe out a whole side of your family tree. And we're not even talking about the variables of everyone involved having to win their respective sperm races.
The number is monumental against the likelihood of any of us existing. That was only (5) greats. What if we went back (30) or (100).
And let's think about where we're at in time, who influenced us, the people who wrote how we perceive classical music? What if they never existed? Or famous scientist that are the reason we understand the world around us.
What if one person on this list had one thing different happen to one of his ancestors 800 years ago?
Issac Newton
Beethoven
Winston Churchill
The Beatles
Shakespeare
Babe Ruth
Pope Francis
Lee Harvey Oswald
Neil Armstrong
Plato
Albert Einstein
Thomas Jefferson
Eli Whitney
Muhammad Ali
Walter Cronkite
Johnny Carson
President Lincoln
these are the people that make up the world, your life, as you know it. And it was absolutely vital that things had not gone even the slightest bit different for thousands and thousands of years for all of us to have made it here together.
What are the odds you and I were lucky enough to be born at all but for it also to be such an exciting time in the history of existence?
Today we're taking to space, we had the music in the 60's, we lived through the awesome 90's and the turn of the century where we connected the world with computers, we're looking for Aliens, we can fly and poop on the same airplane, it's an unbelievably lucky time to have been fortunate enough to find ourselves existing.
tl;dr
It's impossible that you accurately navigated the past, getting the right bounces along the way, and found yourself born at all. I realize you don't have to navigate your past, that the past just happens, but the number's too big for me to consider i was just lucky.
Something, I don't know what, meant for us to be here.
When I was a kid, I used to think about things like "What if my mom and dad didn't have sex the night I was conceived?" What if dad came home late and nodded off watching tv and called it a night instead. Or if my mom had gotten a phone call and had to leave because something had come up. Anything at all. What if my dad had jerked off in the shower that morning before work instead of successfully impregnating my mother with me that night?
I was trying to put into perspective how lucky I had to have been to be alive.
Let's go back a few generations and look at how many people are at play here in order for you to have been born. It's important to keep the math straight
-You have 2 parents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 4 grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 8 great grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 16 great, great (2 greats) grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 32 great, great, great (3 greats) grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 64 great, great, great, great (4 greats) grandparents.
-Each of them has a set of parents themselves so you have 128 great, great, great, great, great (5 greats) grandparents.
So when you're talking about your great, great, great, great, great (5 greats) grandparents, you're talking about 128 people!
What if a single one of those 128 (great x 5) people had something different happen, any variable the day they conceived your great x 4 grandparents. Any of them. Just one of them, they wipe out a whole side of your family tree. And we're not even talking about the variables of everyone involved having to win their respective sperm races.
The number is monumental against the likelihood of any of us existing. That was only (5) greats. What if we went back (30) or (100).
And let's think about where we're at in time, who influenced us, the people who wrote how we perceive classical music? What if they never existed? Or famous scientist that are the reason we understand the world around us.
What if one person on this list had one thing different happen to one of his ancestors 800 years ago?
Issac Newton
Beethoven
Winston Churchill
The Beatles
Shakespeare
Babe Ruth
Pope Francis
Lee Harvey Oswald
Neil Armstrong
Plato
Albert Einstein
Thomas Jefferson
Eli Whitney
Muhammad Ali
Walter Cronkite
Johnny Carson
President Lincoln
these are the people that make up the world, your life, as you know it. And it was absolutely vital that things had not gone even the slightest bit different for thousands and thousands of years for all of us to have made it here together.
What are the odds you and I were lucky enough to be born at all but for it also to be such an exciting time in the history of existence?
Today we're taking to space, we had the music in the 60's, we lived through the awesome 90's and the turn of the century where we connected the world with computers, we're looking for Aliens, we can fly and poop on the same airplane, it's an unbelievably lucky time to have been fortunate enough to find ourselves existing.
tl;dr
It's impossible that you accurately navigated the past, getting the right bounces along the way, and found yourself born at all. I realize you don't have to navigate your past, that the past just happens, but the number's too big for me to consider i was just lucky.
Something, I don't know what, meant for us to be here.
This post was edited on 4/21/16 at 12:44 pm
9
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:03 am to Stacked
you have too much time on your hands
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:03 am to Stacked
Thinking about a world without me is almost enough to bring someone to tears. Doesn't sound like a world worth living in.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:05 am to Stacked
Why couldn't I have been Michael Jordan? That's really my only question in life.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:07 am to Stacked
Looks like someone got too high on 420.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:13 am to cardboardboxer
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:15 am to cardboardboxer
No such thing as too high, but yesterday I was pretty damn close. 
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:18 am to Stacked
Lay off the drugs
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:22 am to kingbob
I can't imagine if I were not smart enough to wonder about my own existence. You're like a bullfrog on a stump, just croaking along not thinking about much.
This post was edited on 4/21/16 at 11:25 am
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:28 am to Stacked
Or maybe I am intelligent enough to see that indeed all life is merely the product of an infinity of improbable outcomes determined in part by an infinity of decisions. In fact, the thread of the space time continuum is so thin that pulling just one thread would completely unravel it. Just because I don't feel the need to post about it on the internet, doesn't mean I lack intelligence. It just means I have the self-confidence not to need shout it out for an e-pat on the back.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:32 am to kingbob
Not sure if you've read my posts before, but one thing's for sure, I certainly don't write them for support and e-pats.
And sorry not sorry, you're on a message board. Go frick yourself if you don't wanna talk about what I wanna talk about in my thread.
And sorry not sorry, you're on a message board. Go frick yourself if you don't wanna talk about what I wanna talk about in my thread.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:33 am to Stacked
tl;dr
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:34 am to kingbob
you're super smart
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:35 am to scrooster
quote:
tl;dr
There was a section for that in the OP.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 11:51 am to Stacked
You're talking too many "what ifs" and forgetting the paradox, the alternate universe type stuff, that you're attempting to evoke here.
It's both against the law of physics and nature, what you are suggesting. It's like the age old question about a tree falling in the woods or the even more modern question about what would happen if you went back in time and killed your great great great great grandpappy.
I was born, almost exactly to the day, nine months after my parents lost power one night during a tornado came through knocking down power lines.
Not surprisingly ... the birth rate, in our neck of the woods, went up exponentially nine months later in our county hospital.
So are all of us born nine months later the result of that tornado? Or are we the result of the power being off and them having nothing better to do? And then you get into the question about the timing of the ovulations for the women ... and it goes on and on.
That's not how life works ... it's just a smoke screen to confuse us and keep us from focusing on more important questions. Yet it is what separates us from all other species on earth ... although I suspect we'll eventually evolve away from that sort of reasoning, over time, as it becomes far less of a philosophical question and more of a physiological one ... question, that is.
It's both against the law of physics and nature, what you are suggesting. It's like the age old question about a tree falling in the woods or the even more modern question about what would happen if you went back in time and killed your great great great great grandpappy.
I was born, almost exactly to the day, nine months after my parents lost power one night during a tornado came through knocking down power lines.
Not surprisingly ... the birth rate, in our neck of the woods, went up exponentially nine months later in our county hospital.
So are all of us born nine months later the result of that tornado? Or are we the result of the power being off and them having nothing better to do? And then you get into the question about the timing of the ovulations for the women ... and it goes on and on.
That's not how life works ... it's just a smoke screen to confuse us and keep us from focusing on more important questions. Yet it is what separates us from all other species on earth ... although I suspect we'll eventually evolve away from that sort of reasoning, over time, as it becomes far less of a philosophical question and more of a physiological one ... question, that is.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 12:38 pm to scrooster
quote:
It's both against the law of physics and nature, what you are suggesting
What do you think I'm suggesting? Explain further about what you meant by this statement.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 1:13 pm to Stacked
I can't talk about this stuff too much on a Thursday afternoon. This thread is Friday talk.
Posted on 4/21/16 at 1:26 pm to GnashRebel
Good. I miss our alian mega structure thread. Those were fun and educating times. I don't remember who it was but there were 2 or 3 posters bring the heat in that thread.
Posted on 4/22/16 at 2:26 pm to kingbob
The 6th dimension encompasses all possibilities that result from the starting point of our universe. When you say pulling just one thread would completely unravel it, what you mean to say is changing any one event would transform our entire existence into another existence but one that still follows our universes laws of physics.
Posted on 4/22/16 at 2:31 pm to Stacked
When looking forward from the past, destiny is simply what actually happened. That's essentially what you're doing here. Yes it is unlikely that we are here in the sense that a lot of other outcomes are possible, but that is the way the cards fell.
It's like if you followed the trunk of a tree and got to the tip of one branch. How likely was it that you got to that specific branches end over another? Probability doesn't matter at that point because the decisions have already been made and you are already at the end of a branch.
In this analogy, the tree represents the universe and the branching represents different realities. Following the branch would be the flow of time.
It's like if you followed the trunk of a tree and got to the tip of one branch. How likely was it that you got to that specific branches end over another? Probability doesn't matter at that point because the decisions have already been made and you are already at the end of a branch.
In this analogy, the tree represents the universe and the branching represents different realities. Following the branch would be the flow of time.
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