Posted on 08/07/2008 9:57:23 PM PDT by neverdem
Probability of individual sperm cell containing "you" impregnating the egg: 1 in Millions
Combine all that, and...
Probability of you actually coming to exist: RIDICULOUSLY SMALL.
I like thinking of it that way, haha.
See In the Beginning Was Information
Our society regards statistics as the highest source of info with surveys etc.
I thought string theory admitted unlimited numbers of parallel universes - some of them would certainly be configured with fundamental constants sufficient to harbor stable systems long enough to evolve life, and all that.
“There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know....” Lazarus Long
I hate when people say that!
bump
It's right up there with #1 priority/top priority.
Will I’m a little confused, how many planets are there in the Solar System?
Not useful!
It’s as if the universe was designed... Hmm... :)
Well, Godel would allow this statement.
Pluto has been under attack for a while now.
The Fermi Paradox withstands another test.
Mars and Venus are Earth-like. Why would we think they are rare?
You are free to believe as you like, fellow Buckeye.
Thanks for the post. I actually discussed this precise issue with the physicist. What annoyed him about the quadrillions of universe argument is that even if universes were being randomly created (that is random in terms of the constants of the General Model) at an unfathomably fast rate, the probability of one having constants that support life still makes our universe surpassingly improbable. We're talking probabilities in the range of, if I recall correctly, 10^-408. Those are silly small numbers--even if you created a new universe once a nanosecond for the entire life of our universe, you would only have shaved the numbers up to, maybe, 10^-400 (some handwaving on the numbers alert--these are WAG's to illustrate a point, not to be precise).
Who knows, the quadrillions of alternate universe thesis may be disprovable someday. But according to this fellow, it still doesn't get you to any reasonable chance that any life-supporting universe would ever occur.
I really cannot say much more his thinking about this subject without making it obvious who he was and this was a private conversation.
You are right as to lottery tickets, but the probability of any given lottery ticket holder are of the order of 10^-5 to, say, 10^-7. The probabilities we are talking about are in the range of 10^-400. I don't know what your technical background is. If you do have a technical background, I'm sure you understand there is no appropriate way to compare those two sets of probabilities to prove your point. If you aren't, 10^-400 would be written out as "0." followed by four hundred zeros and then a one. Each 0 makes it ten times less likely
But in the lottery, there's only one drawing.
In the other case, you keep drawing until there's a winner.
My background is technical enough to recognize that in either case, the winner has 100% chance of being the winner, and in the second case, the chance of winning over an infinite number of draws is unity.
Odd physicist, who would not recognize the absurdity of such a statement.
Ah. But in the quadrillions of universes scenario, you only get quadrillions of draws--not nearly enough to even begin to make a dent in probabilities as small as 10^-400. You don't get an infinite number of draws--that's precisely the problem my physicist acquaintance was addressing. You have a tiny number of draws (only quadrillions) in the face of odds that make a quadrillion look like a single hydrogen atom in our entire universe (actually, the odds of a single successful draw out of quadrillions are much worse than that but it illustrates the point).
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