yego.me
yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

The Probability of Human Existence Is Infinitesimally Small

less than 1m read
·Nov 3, 2024

Here's another way to think about it that is mathematically frightening for the people who think that the aliens are out there and they're going to visit us at some time in the future. We were talking earlier about trillions of planets that exist throughout the known universe that might even be friendly for life to arise.

Imagine that between us as intelligent human beings and the most simple form of bacteria that we can imagine, there are only 100 independent evolutionary steps. Now, that's not true; it's probably a million or more different mutations that had to happen and were favorable to allow any organism to survive such that we exist today. But just make it only a hundred, and imagine that each of those independent steps had a probability of just one in ten of happening.

Now, in fact, it's probably more like one in a million, but we'll be generous; we'll say one in ten. So now what we have is a chain of probability: one in ten times one in ten times one in ten, a hundred times. And if you know how to do mathematics, you'll realize that this is 1 over 10 all to the power of 100, which is 1 over 1 followed by a hundred zeros.

That number swamps the astronomical number I was talking about with planets earlier on. In other words, the probability of us arising on this particular argument is infinitesimally small. The fact that it's happened once should blow our minds.

Michael Burry's Warning for the Index Fund Bubble in 2023
How The Rich Live Longer

More Articles

View All
Subjects and predicates | Syntax | Khan Academy
Hello grammarians, hello Paige, hi David. So today we’re going to talk about identifying subjects and predicates. In order to do that, we shall begin with a sentence. Paige, would you read me the sentence please? “I bought a crate of goblin hats.” Thank…
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) | Biomolecules | MCAT | Khan Academy
I’m here with Emily, our biology content fellow, to talk about PCR or polymerase chain reaction, which you’ve actually done a lot of. Why have you done PCR? PCR was kind of the mainstay of my graduate project, where I built all sorts of different recomb…
Making SOLID Nitrogen!
Boiling point is something that we normally think of as a stable property of a substance. But it really depends on what the pressure is around the substance. So, for example, water only boils at 100 degrees Celsius if the pressure is 1 atmosphere. So if …
Journey Inside Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone | Short Film Showcase
When we first walked into that room, the first thing that we picked up was the sound of dripping water. You can see it first dripping from the ceiling; large puddles accumulated on the floor. There’s a sense of fear that comes from that because they tell …
Into the Forests | Branching Out | Part 1
April is Earth month, a time to celebrate our natural world. It’s also a call to reflect on our impact and think of new ways that we can protect and restore the planet. I’m Ginger Z, chief meteorologist at ABC News. My family and I are hitting the road t…
Why Lionfish Should Be Your Favorite Fish to Eat | Nat Geo Live
When I was 17, I was diving off the coast of South Florida and I saw the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It had these bold stripes and these big dramatic spines. And I had no idea what it was. So I went to the dive master and he told me I had just se…