Reality Is Statistically Impossible
Someone said this to me the other day and I've been pondering it ever since and am completely fascinated by it. In case you haven't taken statistics before (or just didn't understand it), when something is so rare that it can't really be expressed in a number that we can even begin to comprehend, it is said that it is "impossible". Not that it will NEVER happen, but rather, it's so unbeleivably rare, the chances of it happening are too minute for it to reasonably actually happen. How does this apply to reality? If you think of all of the factors that brought you here today to be sitting in front of a computer reading this nonsense, it's unbeleivable that you're actually sitting here reading this because there are billions of the other things that you could have ended up doing at this specific moment in time. For example, you could have decided to read something else, or not to read it all, you could have been feeling sick and stayed in bed, you could have had computer problems, you could have went and done something else, you could have gotten hit by a truck this morning, or never met me, or not become friends with me, or subscribed to this crappy blog, or your parents could have decided to move somewhere else when you were a child, resulting in you not being where you are right now, you could have taken a totally different path in life, etc. Hell, the same goes for me, I could have not heard the person who told me that reality is statistically impossible and never been pondering this, I could have taken a different class than that guy was in, I could have gone to a different university, taken a different major, died of pneumonia as a child (which I almost did), decided to blog about something else today, or any other millions of tiny little things that led me to be sitting here at work and typing this into a little myspace blog. Think about that for a minute. That's absolutely mind boggling!!!!!!! Every single little teensy tiny thing that any human being has ever done in all of human history has somehow affected us and brought us to where we are today. Not only in a physical sense, but it brought us to where we are mentally, religiously, ethically, sexually. It makes me feel so small when I think about the world in those terms, but yet it's fascinating how we all magically flow together. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this and I don't think there was really a point, other than that I was completely blown away by this and was wondering if anyone else ever sits around and thinks about this sort of thing.
Someone said this to me the other day and I've been pondering it ever since and am completely fascinated by it. In case you haven't taken statistics before (or just didn't understand it), when something is so rare that it can't really be expressed in a number that we can even begin to comprehend, it is said that it is "impossible". Not that it will NEVER happen, but rather, it's so unbeleivably rare, the chances of it happening are too minute for it to reasonably actually happen. How does this apply to reality? If you think of all of the factors that brought you here today to be sitting in front of a computer reading this nonsense, it's unbeleivable that you're actually sitting here reading this because there are billions of the other things that you could have ended up doing at this specific moment in time. For example, you could have decided to read something else, or not to read it all, you could have been feeling sick and stayed in bed, you could have had computer problems, you could have went and done something else, you could have gotten hit by a truck this morning, or never met me, or not become friends with me, or subscribed to this crappy blog, or your parents could have decided to move somewhere else when you were a child, resulting in you not being where you are right now, you could have taken a totally different path in life, etc. Hell, the same goes for me, I could have not heard the person who told me that reality is statistically impossible and never been pondering this, I could have taken a different class than that guy was in, I could have gone to a different university, taken a different major, died of pneumonia as a child (which I almost did), decided to blog about something else today, or any other millions of tiny little things that led me to be sitting here at work and typing this into a little myspace blog. Think about that for a minute. That's absolutely mind boggling!!!!!!! Every single little teensy tiny thing that any human being has ever done in all of human history has somehow affected us and brought us to where we are today. Not only in a physical sense, but it brought us to where we are mentally, religiously, ethically, sexually. It makes me feel so small when I think about the world in those terms, but yet it's fascinating how we all magically flow together. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this and I don't think there was really a point, other than that I was completely blown away by this and was wondering if anyone else ever sits around and thinks about this sort of thing.