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Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

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Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#51

Post by zuminator »

setr wrote: post #35
fastball wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm stupid but I'm not sure I understand the difference between most recent common ancestor and the identical ancestors point. Can someone explain differently?

From my reading of the above, the “most recent common ancestor” is a single individual who acts as a common ancestor to all alive today Whereas “identical ancestors” is a time period where everyone alive is an ancestor to those living today. So a group of ancestors are being selected — rather than just the one. So this should generally always be closer to now than the “single recent ancestor”, simply by virtue of all…

During the "most recent common ancestor" period, as you said, there's a single individual who acts as a common ancestor to all those alive today. Let's for sake of argument say that person is Genghis Khan, that Genghis Khan is somewhere in every current living person's family tree. How about Genghis's parents? Mr. and Ms. Khan (actually Yesugei and Hoelun) are surely BOTH common ancestors to everyone alive today. And surely Grandpappy Khan and the other three grandparents, and so on, going back. That ancestral tree keeps growing and eventually, you'll get to the point in the past that everyone alive at that period is an ancestor to Genghis Khan. Which means they are all also in our family tree. Therefore we all have an identical looking family tree from that point backwards.

Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#52

Post by vidarh »

Jensson wrote: post #17

Almost every country was very homogeneous just 50 years ago, so your family tree wont branch out like that normally. USA is a bit different since it is a nation of immigrants, but mostly people barely even left their villages historically.

It won't branch out all the time, but it doesn't matter much: People staying in one place makes them quickly "saturate" a location. The occasional migrant from the local area then quickly makes it spread outwards in a new area. Few places are so totally isolated that this wouldn't happen.

Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#53

Post by 1_player »

irjustin wrote: post #6

> Now I feel special and important and also I feel irrelevant and meaningless. There's an infinite number of ways to end up at this feeling+realization. Personally, I reached this when I got interested in cosmology (PBS Space Time!!). I invoke Nihilistic (existential nihilism) ideas. Because it's not hard to end up at the conclusion that everything is meaningless - you create your own meaning. I recognize lots of pro…

There is nothing more freeing than embracing nihilism. We're just sentient space dust, after all.

Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#55

Post by nefitty »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #39
ngngngng wrote: post #32

Pro tip, get the old folks talking, and take out your phone to record. Whatever they're talking about, even if they're talking about nothing at all. They'll all be gone soon, and having video of your boring everyday interactions with them is better than having only your memories of them.

This is probably one of my greatest regrets with my grandmother. I was planning to do exactly this for quite a while but life had other plans, she is gone now and although I have great memories of her, I do regret not having a video record of her story telling to be able to share with her great-grandkids.

Oh, that really hurts. I'm lucky my grandpa's sister is still around. I should go see her more.

During Thanksgiving I found out my grandpa had a rebellious streak. He quit a steady high-paying job with an American bananero to live in the jungle by himself for a bit. Apparently he had a really tense relationship with authority, which I see in my mom, one of my brothers and definitely in myself.

During his time living out in the wild, he constructed platforms in trees to sleep on. His outpost was near the villages his family lived in, so his main task out there was to keep the area free of leopards. I learned that one of my aunts in Central America might actually have photos of my grandpa as a young man with his leopard trophies!

My God. The things I missed hearing. Era muy chingon mi abuelo.

Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#56

Post by irjustin »

1_player wrote: post #53
irjustin wrote: post #6

> Now I feel special and important and also I feel irrelevant and meaningless. There's an infinite number of ways to end up at this feeling+realization. Personally, I reached this when I got interested in cosmology (PBS Space Time!!). I invoke Nihilistic (existential nihilism) ideas. Because it's not hard to end up at the conclusion that everything is meaningless - you create your own meaning. I recognize lots of pro…

There is nothing more freeing than embracing nihilism. We're just sentient space dust, after all.

Totally. The concept of heat death made everything feel pointless to me (that was my moment).

Heat death is well over 10^106 years away[0] but for some reason i was like wtf... nothing matters.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe#Tim...

Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#57

Post by ninjanomnom »

plafl wrote: post #48
irrational wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then, you and your sibling could, statistically, share zero genes (you each get 50% from each parent and it is possible you each got a different 50%). Your own parents and children are the closest relatives you have since you are guaranteed to have 50% of your parent’s genes and same with your children.

> share zero genes That would be impossible, unless one of you is some kind of bacteria. And even in that case I doubt it. According to Wikipedia[1] (yes, I invested some time to refute a random stranger on the internet, well, maybe a cousin) there is something like 0.1-0.4% of genetic variation between humans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation

The context here is familial relations, while it's true all humans share dna we ignore that when discussing whether someone is related to another.

Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#58

Post by ryanmercer »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #39
ngngngng wrote: post #32

Pro tip, get the old folks talking, and take out your phone to record. Whatever they're talking about, even if they're talking about nothing at all. They'll all be gone soon, and having video of your boring everyday interactions with them is better than having only your memories of them.

This is probably one of my greatest regrets with my grandmother. I was planning to do exactly this for quite a while but life had other plans, she is gone now and although I have great memories of her, I do regret not having a video record of her story telling to be able to share with her great-grandkids.

My father died 12 days before my 13th birthday, cancer. My 7th grade tech teacher (also sadly now dead from leukemia) sent me home with a camcorder to interview dad, to record memories, because his father died young too. What did I do? I sat in a chair and pointed it at the tv and recorded episodes of Battlestar Galactica (1978) reruns on tv...

Sigh. Although, dad was pretty sick then from both the cancer and treatment and I'm not sure I would have wanted to revisit those videos anyway so maybe it's a blessing in disguise. As it stands though, I only have one recording of his voice - an answering machine recording and I do think it would be nice to have more of his voice. I guess I'll have to wait for time machines.

Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#59

Post by kqr »

dmurray wrote: post #50
kqr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. There were fewer people, yes, but they also moved around a lot more. It's only comparatively recently that we've gotten stuck in our places and social structures.

What? I can't tell if this is a joke but the average person in the 1600s moved around a lot less than the average person today. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of them never left a ten-mile radius.

Which persons are you referring to? People in the Americas, in Australia, in Africa as well as probably other places I'm forgetting about easily traveled hundreds of miles and both shaped and joined communities other than the ones they were in before.

Re: Everyone on Earth is your cousin (2015)

#60

Post by [deleted] »

tzs wrote: post #7

There are a few particularly interesting points when you go back up your ancestor tree. First, there is a point where some ancestor of yours is an ancestor of everyone else currently living (and so will also be an ancestor of everyone else to come). This is the "most recent common ancestor" point. Go farther back and you reach the "identical ancestors point" (also known as the "all common ancestors point" or the "gen…

[deleted]
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