/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2016122]

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"

Richard Dawkins
Unweaving the Rainbow (1998).

[Anonymous No.2016146]

That's an interesting way of looking at it.

With this statement, how does he stand on abortion?

[Anonymous No.2016153]

Feels privileged, man.

[Anonymous No.2016158]

Nobody should care about """people""" that might have been concieved but haven't. Same goes to people who weren't born.

[Anonymous No.2016157]

There has probably been more "wasted" sperm cells than there has been individual multicellular organisms alive, especially considering that many animals masturbate.

[me !7HAMu23nPc No.2016164]

"Most people are never going to be born."
  -Richard Dawkins

Brilliant...

[Anonymous No.2016166]

For anons who would rather hear this from Richard Dawkins himself...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac33dOAgqus

[Anonymous No.2016172]

Sophist, grassroots pseudo-intellectual, unknowingly perpetuates and supports pro-life loons via redundant babble: Tonight, at 11.

[Anonymous No.2016173]

It is a kind of humility to work your way up the probability chain of existing in the first place. Then existing as a person born in a time and location with limited disease. Then existing in a time and place where humans are currently discovering the fundamental laws of the Universe.

The first and only time I ever did mushrooms I went through this entire process of 'ego death' in what seemed like an eternity. I was at the trailing end of a supernova and existed as the heavier elements that were on their way to our solar system and ended up as I am not on planet Earth. Astronomical probability after astronomical probability. Each step in the chain of probabilities assembling a small portion of what would one day become my biological self.

Fuck it was amazing.

[Anonymous No.2016175]

Normally I don't mind Dawkins, but what a load of horseshit. Prime example of jerking yourself off with words that amount to nothing.

[Anonymous No.2016182]

>>2016175
a thousand times this
he's wanking his psuedointellectual johnson.

[Anonymous No.2016189]

>>2016175
It is people like you, who can't put the grand scheme of things into a personal perspective, that lead to wars, intolerance and prejudice. You, like most people, think the Universe owes you something.

[Anonymous No.2016192]

>>2016175
richard dawkins, the greatest pseudointellectual, darwin-wannabe of the 21st century.

[Anonymous No.2016194]

>>2016182
At least he has one to wank. You were born with an intellectual vagina. Enjoy it.

[Anonymous No.2016198]

>Normally I don't mind >>2016172 but what a load of horseshit. Prime example of jerking yourself off with words that amount to nothing.

[Anonymous No.2016199]

>>2016189
The universe owes me the 30 seconds I spent reading that tripe, that's for sure.

[Anonymous No.2016209]

>>2016199
>Implying your random mess of neurons could have, otherwise, come together in synchronicity to form even the semblance of an important idea in those 30 seconds regardless.

[Anonymous No.2016230]

Hurr durr, what is religion, reincarnation, the concept of a soul.

Also, lol at the last line. Drama queen.

[Anonymous No.2016235]

"Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us."

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Anonymous No.2016238]

>>2016198
;3

[Anonymous No.2016254]

>>2016194

Zing.

[Anonymous No.2016253]

>>2016235
"I paid a worker at New York's zoo to re-open it just for me and Robin. When we got to the gorilla cage there was 1 big silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas. They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant. I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let smash that silverback's snotbox! He declined."

— Mike Tyson

[Anonymous No.2016264]

>>2016253

[Anonymous No.2016351]

>>2016122

>The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.

Alright, step back. So we're positing a sample space of human beings, allowed by DNA, and marvelling how unlikely it is, within this sample space, that we would have been born.

My question is: Why stop there? Why stop at what is encoded by DNA for the sample space? I mean, if we're going to say that, then why not also say some laws of the universe can be taken as the axiomatic constants that define a probabilistic sample space (which I don't really buy in that form, but it's the frame of the quote).

Then isn't it the case that we are also being denied an unfathomable amount more than we have now? What if, going the other directin, we had been born as one of the less intelligent primates? Wouldn't that be a disappointment, given how "close" we were to being born as humans? Wouldn't that disappointment, if we could understand it fully, dwarf the happiness at having been born? It might, and why are we to presume humanity is the highest form of being, and that we might not have, but for a slight shift in probability, have been born into this highest, perfect form of being? I mean, it at least makes me skeptical of the quote, even if not quite openly hostile or anything.

Anyway, I guess the real point here is that we really have no real basis for judgment as to what that posited sample space of possibilities really can allow, for good or bad, for existence or non-existence. We have science and reason and even fables and literature, sure, but it's a question that remains answerless, and Dawkins' answer only serves to obscure this fact.

[Anonymous No.2016354]

>>2016122
no thnx, im not intrested in any quote of that arrogant piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.2016355]

>filename

[Anonymous No.2016368]

If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me

[Anonymous No.2016386]

>>2016122
>>2016175
>>2016192

U ALL SO JELLY CAUSE DAKINS WRITE BOOK AND MAKE MOINIES AND GET PFROFFESOR GRADS:

U ALL SO JELLY.

[Anonymous No.2016408]

We didn't win anything. It is stupid to say we are "special" that we exist, because if we didn't, we would never know it anyway.

[Anonymous No.2016416]

>>2016354
>thinks confidence=arrogance

[Anonymous No.2016451]

>>2016408
I think you are discounting the value of our existence. You're lucky to be alive.

[Anonymous No.2016461]

>>2016451

I don't think you're getting it. also, I'm not even the guy you're replyign to.

[Anonymous No.2016470]

>>2016461

I don't think either of you get it.

I'm going to invoke the anthropic principle on top of your anthropic principle. You exist, so you can realize how lucky you are.

That is, of course, if you're live in a westernized country and not some third-world shithole where the only thing you do is exist long enough to starve to death.

[Anonymous No.2016477]

>>2016451
>>2016451

There is no "luck" involved in that whatsoever. The chance to be alive and exist is 100%. You either do, and know it, or don't and never will.

[Anonymous No.2016495]

Ugh, fucking PSEUDOINTELLECTUALS actually trying to find reasons to be INTERESTED in life rather than just being cold, distant curmudgeons completely dedicated to the linear, pragmatic hording of objective information and prevention of doing anything "stupid" with it (A.K.A anything. because doing things involves decision-making, which is subjective and opinionated. Everyone knows subjectivity is for fucking PSEUDOINTELLECTUAL PEASANTS).

Anyway, back to immersing myself in dull, objective activities devoid of soul (not that souls exist, hahaha. I'm only using that word metaphorically, which makes me a STUPID PSEUDOINTELLECTUAL ARTFAG PEASANT for these few seconds).

Enjoy your shallow opinions and mindless engagement in reproductive activities despite the use of contraceptives, you sperm-wasting PEASANTS.

Oh, if any more PEASANT OPINIONS or PERCEPTIVE INSIGHTS ON LIFE THAT MOST PEOPLE WOULD NEVER CONSIDER THAT ARE MEANT TO UPLIFT reach my ears, I'll be sure to call it STUPID and PSEUDOINTELLECTUAL, even if it came from an intelligent person who has accomplished more than I ever will, because that's how I roll.

Fucking peasants.

[Anonymous No.2016500]

>>2016495
Shit's so cash?

[Anonymous No.2016532]

>>2016500

u mad
u jelly
mfw
herp derp

and other overused internet neologisms

[Anonymous No.2016533]

I was the fastest. I deserve to be here.

[Anonymous No.2016568]

"We are alive, and that makes us the unlucky ones. Most people have never be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We unprivileged few, who lost the lottery of non-existence against all odds, how dare you tell me not to whine at the face of my suffering?"

-Anonymous
Posting in /sci/ (2010).

[Anonymous No.2016579]

>>2016533

mfw I realize the phrase "I won a race once" is never a lie, so long as it comes from the mouth of a human being.

[Anonymous No.2016603]

>Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born

"so-called vornorks" whot