Stuck on the Subway
Hello reader,
I'm feeling frustrated and angry. Stuck on the subway, listening to unsolicited music, while running late. I'm never late, so I'm not handling it well. I'm writing this on my phone just to give myself something to do, as a free writing exercise. So let me just take a step back, and think this through...
How did I get here? I don't pretend to be well versed in the origins of life, but let think about this. I'm the product of my parents, so presumably, I had to win a big sperm race among thousands of contestants, if not millions. Are the odds of me being here one in a million? What are the odds of my parents meeting each other, or being born in the first place? What about their parents, and so on throughout human history!?
This is too complex for me to handle, and the music isn't helping. Here's what Google has to say (not that I'm trusting Google, but it’s a better starting point than a shot in the dark. Although I suppose a “shot in the dark” was my starting point, if you think about it). This is an article from the Huffington post "On the Probability of Your Being Born", by Dr. Ali Binazir. Who illustrates the likelihood of any particular person being alive. I've copied his conclusion below.
You can read the full article here.
"Probability of your being born: One in 10 to the power of 2,685,000. As a comparison, the approximate number of atoms in the known universe is 10 to the power of 80. So what’s the probability of your being born? It’s the probability of 2.5 million people getting together - about the population of San Diego - each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice - and they all come up the exact same number - say, 550,343,279,001." - Dr. Ali Binazir
If you read the full article, it's as good an estimation as any. But even this doesn’t take into account the probability of earth, our solar system, or the fucking universe existing in the first place!!!
Now, what was I whining about again?
Hope you can relate.
Yours truly,
Matthew Cooper
