Life’s a lottery
The Odds of You Being Here Are Literally Zero
And the fact you are reading this is nothing short of a goddamn miracle
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I happened across an article. It was on a betting site so I can’t link to it here. If you want to read it, just search for “The Odds of Being Born”. It referenced a study by Dr Ali Binazir, who just happens to be on medium (what are the chances?).
There are lots of mathematical statistics there and I won’t quote them. Apart from the last one.
The odds of you being alive at this time are 1 in 10 to the power of 2,685,000
So infinitesimal as to be near enough zero. In comparison, the estimated number of atoms in the known universe is 10 to the power of 80.
So when those people say you are special, you know it’s true.
Let’s think about it some more
Your parents met each other. Maybe it was favourable? They might have been born in the same locality and gone to the same school.
Yet they may have come from different continents. Sheer coincidence that they ever met. There is more chance of winning the lottery. And far more likely you’ll be struck by lightning.
What about your two sets of grandparents and eight sets of great grandparents? All those people had to meet, attract each other, and procreate in order for you to be here.
It gets even more mind-boggling when you consider sperm and eggs. In each case, it had to be the ‘right’ sperm and the ‘correct egg’. Otherwise, you’d be a completely different person, if you’d actually been born at all. And so on, right back to the beginning of life.
The chances of you not being here are overwhelming. Yet here you are. And I am so pleased to see you.
