Posted by njili on November 21, 1998 at 21:38:44:
In Reply to: Who has a precious religious belief? posted by Pohl on November 20, 1998 at 08:36:47:
I'm going to accept that you're really interested in learning and respond. I'm also going to make this as simple as I can. The odds of things being as they are is 'unity' - 1 in 1. You can make a fortune betting with anyone on anything with odds like that.
Using figures as you did in your post is very misleading. If you use your method, and under your criteria, then it's impossible for you to exist. A man produces about 12 trillion sperm during his lifetime, see:
http://www.innerbody.com/text/repo10.html
that means that even after your father was born, the odds were only about 1 in 3 trillion that the sperm that became you would become a child (I'm supposing your father would have four children). Let's go back a generation or two. Even once your grandfather was born, the odds that the sperm that became your father would become a baby were the same (about 1 in 4 trillion) which means at that time (only two generations back, the odds of 'you' being born were 1 in 4 trillion TIMES 4 trillion. Now what do you figure your chances were if we go back a thousand generations? Even worse than the figures you were quoting I'd guess. Want to make the odds even worse? In each generation the right sperm had to meet the right egg from the right female so you can multiply the aforementioned odds by googol. I'm no mathematician but I'd guess the odds of you being here are 1 in googolplex to the 100 billionth power. THEN, my son, figure I had the same odds as you .... what then were the odds that we'd both be communicating with each other over the internet in 1998. 1 in googolplex to the 100 billionth power TIMES googolplex to the 100 billionth power. And the odds that rpcman would be reading our posts? Why, he was no more likely to exist than you or I. We'll just have to multiply those odds by a few more googols. Get the point. Pretty far out eh?
P.S. Googol = 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Googolplex is 1 followed by a googol of zeroes. Believe me ... my googolplex beats all those 'powers' numbers you quoted in your post. Why, with odds like that, you can't possibly exist. I guess I wasted my time typing this post after all.