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January 7, 2012

Have you ever wondered how likely – or unlikely – it is that you exist?

Binazir calculates just how improbable it was that the right sperm from your father hooked up with the right egg produced by your mother
-- by his estimate, it's about one chance in 400 quadrillion (that number seems only slightly more tame in scientific notation: 4 x 10^17).  And that’s hardly the whole battle:  To even get to that stage, all of your ancestors, going all the way back to the beginning of life on Earth, had to survive to reproductive age.  Multiplying the string of probabilities together, he concludes that the odds of your existence are an astronomical one in 10^2,685.000. -- Life, the Universe, and Everything: What are the Odds? | MIT SciWrite

Posted by gerardvanderleun at January 7, 2012 2:06 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

To paraphrase Heidegger: How likely is it that anything at all exists?

Posted by: B Lewis at January 7, 2012 3:09 PM

Slim to less than zero.

Posted by: vanderleun at January 7, 2012 5:40 PM

Those numbers are getting close to our national debt.

Posted by: Peccable at January 7, 2012 5:43 PM

You are a fluke
Of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not
The universe is laughing at you behind your back.

Posted by: Fat Man at January 7, 2012 7:13 PM

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