What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#1

Post by kloncks » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 3:27 AM UTC

What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?
blogs.law.harvard.edu

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#2

Post by geezer » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 4:21 AM UTC

Probability is whatever you want it to be if you are allowed to pick the sample space of your choice.

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#3

Post by autarch » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 4:27 AM UTC

This is a fun thought experiment, but I think it over dramatizes the reality.

There's a huge potential set of humans, of which the current population represents one infinitesimally tiny subset of that potential set. But there's a lot of people, and the fact that one of them is you is largely unremarkable. If it hadn't been you, it would've been someone overwhelmingly similar to you.

In other words, we're not unique snowflakes. Humans are more alike than they are different, so don't get so excited about the miracle of your existence.

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#4

Post by altrego99 » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 4:35 AM UTC

There is another angle through which you could attempt to determine the probability of you existing. It's by dividing number of people on Earth today, by total number of genetic permutations possible. Of course that would remove cultural factors from the equation... but calculating actual probability of cultural factors are pretty damn hard!

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#5

Post by jodrellblank » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 4:42 AM UTC

It's a meaningless "probability" on several counts.

1) It applies to everyone reading it, and it would apply to me if I were different and reading it. It tries to convey a specialness which doesn't seem to exist. If a billion people win a penny each then winning a penny isn't miraculous, even if it is a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance that you win any particular penny - but the 'particular' part has no significance.

2) I am reading it, so my existence probability is ~1.

3) I wasn't waiting in the wings somewhere with a dice roll choosing whether I would be born or not, I am what was born to and raised by my parents. Birth and youth happened before "I", not the other way around.

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#6

Post by alnayyir » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 4:48 AM UTC

The probabilities used are meaningless.

Let me summarize the content:

Re: fw: re: re: re: fw: fw: fw: CHECK THIS OUT!

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#7

Post by Jun8 » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 4:55 AM UTC

Interesting thing is that when people are faced with a very rare poker hand, e.g. a royal flush, they go "OMG, what's the probability of that happening", without thinking about the fact that any hand they are dealt has a similar low probability, e.g. there are 1,302,540 no pair hands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability), so the probability of your uninteresting, stupid hand being dealt is 1 in 1.3 million!

It is us who give meaning to probabilities and deem some events as interesting and others not.

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#8

Post by tansey » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 5:07 AM UTC

Jun8 wrote: post #7

Interesting thing is that when people are faced with a very rare poker hand, e.g. a royal flush, they go "OMG, what's the probability of that happening", without thinking about the fact that any hand they are dealt has a similar low probability, e.g. there are 1,302,540 no pair hands ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability ), so the probability of your uninteresting, stupid hand being dealt is 1 in 1.3 milli…

But people think that way because of the utility of the hand. Worthless hands are abstracted into the same category (junk) because they all have about the same value. A royal flush, however, has by definition a guaranteed value with no risk involved. You cannot lose with a royal flush, thus the variance is 0, which is the rarest of all things at a poker table.

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#9

Post by xianshou » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 5:15 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #5

It's a meaningless "probability" on several counts. 1) It applies to everyone reading it, and it would apply to me if I were different and reading it. It tries to convey a specialness which doesn't seem to exist. If a billion people win a penny each then winning a penny isn't miraculous, even if it is a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance that you win any particular penny - but the 'particular' part has no significance. 2) I a…

I appreciate point #2: "The probability that I exist, given that I exist, is 1."

However, the question addressed by the OP is not "What is the probability that I would exist in this world?" but "What is the probability, across the space of all possible continuations of the world from the dawn of humanity, that the world would end up in a state that includes me?"

Re: What Are The Chances That You Would Be Born?

#10

Post by sage_joch » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 5:18 AM UTC

altrego99 wrote: post #4

There is another angle through which you could attempt to determine the probability of you existing. It's by dividing number of people on Earth today, by total number of genetic permutations possible. Of course that would remove cultural factors from the equation... but calculating actual probability of cultural factors are pretty damn hard!

But identical twins have the same genes, so even if your gene sequence came into existence, it doesn't mean that you would exist (whatever that means). Sentience is weird.