A conversation about the probability of existence

I have done some of this before, but with the new AI resource one can delve deeper. So my example starts at the birth of Christ, the year zero. More on that below. But it’s necessary to pick a starting point. The question is, given all the ancestors necessary to complete my family tree existed in the year zero, how likely is it that I would come into existence in the 20th century.

That’s some 2000 years or perhaps 80 generations. Which means there need to be 2 to the power 80 couplings since the year zero. That’s a vast number…..1208925819614629174706176 ….to be precise. Many more than the population could have generated.

The twist is that these couplings are duplicated over and over again throughout the family tree. Chat has access to models that do these calculations, and given the parameters we are working with 20 to 30 million ancestor couplings look probable.

But one can refine that further by putting in some of your ancestry. We are all mongrels but for me English, Scottish and Huguenot are the biggest contributors. With that in the model Chat came up with 25 million couplings.

But looking at that from a year Zero perspective each of those couplings had a probability attached say a 25% chance a girl would pick a particular boy in her village. If you reflect that probability, the likelihood of those couplings taking place blows out to another epic number, I0 to the power of minus 15 million approximately. Effectively zero.

But do we have to be unique is another objection. The way I see it the egg has to be unique…..sperm is an almost infinite variable, can we set it aside? In theory yes, as long as the time path of female eggs is undisturbed from year zero to now ……you should exist, but not exactly you.

This argument is destroyed by the need for the new male partner in each case to fertilize the same egg….another 1 in 10, 20, 30….240 variable. Put that in the probability chain and it should dwarf the effect of any interloper males.

Moreover we have missed out on the 298,000 years since man became man, the infinity of sperm and all the billions of paths that came out of creation to the year 300,000 BC, natural or god made….I make no judgements here.

None of us should be here. The chance of you existing is the number just before 1 divided by infinity. This may appear like nonsense we are all here….but we can’t see the infinite grey legions that aren’t. Picture a child on the beach with a bucket, and his mother tells him to fetch ten grains of sand. Those grains of sand exist, but for this purpose the beach doesn’t.

In that light we are unbelievably lucky, way beyond winning the lottery…..every one of us. In the light of this why do we as humans engage is so many petty acts? That probably also comes out of the mists of time…..the essential need to fight to survive,

And if the probability is just before 1 divided by infinity, then this "1" is surely divided by infinity.

"The tale goes that during the Philippine–American War (around 1899–1902), a young woman was supposedly impregnated after a bullet passed through the testicles of a soldier and then struck her abdomen. The bullet, according to the legend, carried sperm into her body, leading to conception.

It was published as a “case report” in an early 20th-century U.S. medical journal, but it’s now regarded as a mix of myth and dark humor rather than a credible medical event. In reality, the chances of such a pregnancy are essentially zero—the conditions required (live sperm surviving the heat, trauma, and velocity of a bullet) are biologically impossible.

The story stuck around because it combined shock value, wartime absurdity, and the fascination with “miracle” pregnancies, making it one of the most famous (and bizarre) medical legends."

I never heard that story before, the things people believe! That said a former colleague of mine took a bullet on board that passed through the small area between the heart and the shoulder. A few inches either way and he had no life. There are sometimes small margins in war.

Liberals are incredible, they cling to their non sense no matter what. They have this mental resilience that they can dismiss their immediate surrounding. Powerful force that ensures they are going to go on their large human massacres relentlessly. Hundreds of millions people to succumb. Liberals can not stop themselves at this stage.

To fully appreciate your remarks Trad perhaps you could put a label on yourself.

"What we call consequence and coincidence are but two names for the same chain of causality glimpsed from different limits of our perception, leaving us unable to know whether existence itself is ordered or absurd."

So my example starts at the birth of Christ, the year zero. More on that below. But it’s necessary to pick a starting point.

There has to be matter to invoke a starting point.

Good post.

Glad you enjoyed it