The thread below discussing how things might have been different had the ending been different in 1865 brought to mind the very existence of each of us. Had that war ended differently the odds are that most of us here would not exist today. Everything that had to occur for your parents to have existed and to have created you at the very time they did qualifies as a miracle.
Reflecting on my own case. The great-grandfather on one side of my family and the great-great-grandfather on a different side of my family at the very least might not have survived had the tables been reversed in 1865. In any event, their return home would have come at a different time and everything they did from that day forward would have been a bit different. Any changes at that level would have altered the destiny of the following generations leading up to me.
On one side of my family I have an ancestor from Ireland in the mid 1700's who slapped his new stepmother because she was abusinve towards him and his siblings. Within a week, at age 14, he was put on a ship and sent to America to pacify her. Without that slap and ensuing banishment, hundreds (or more) of Americans and others would have never come to exist.
> On one side of my family I have an ancestor from Ireland
Angus McCow?
😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
Thats Scotland.
In this thread is lack of understanding of large numbers. I'd also add that if my existence qualifies as a miracle, then the standard for miracles is way too low.
CSS
Of course your existence qualifies as a miracle. If nothing else, consider that millions of sperm took off for that single egg and you won the race.
CSS
That's the point. Post hoc probabilities are not generally valid.
I'm trying to remember the logic, or the name of the fallacy. I'm afraid I can't at the moment.
The probability of me existing is 1. If the requirement for a miracle is probability = 1 then that's not much of a benchmark.
I'm going to have to brush up on this debate though, if we continue. It's been ages since I've messed around with this.
yes, if you went back in time and changed history even by the slightest bit; the present would come tumbling down. Even delaying your conception by a few moments would change the make-up of your DNA.
> yes, if you went back in time and changed history even by the slightest bit; the present would come tumbling down. Even delaying your conception by a few moments would change the make-up of your DNA.
According to the theory of Parallel Universes there is a clone of you that live in different universes where the inhabitants make different decisions from our own. Oh yes, and time doesn't exist. All this happens simultaneously.
True, True, but ...
> > yes, if you went back in time and changed history even by the slightest bit; the present would come tumbling down. Even delaying your conception by a few moments would change the make-up of your DNA.
>
> According to the theory of Parallel Universes there is a clone of you that live in different universes where the inhabitants make different decisions from our own. Oh yes, and time doesn't exist. All this happens simultaneously.
True, True, but the parallel universes would be created only if you go back in time. Precisely the reason why we can't go back in time. For me, one infinite universe is enough.
True, True, but ...
yeah , I though Michael J Fox figured this all out years ago.. my head hurts.
No Miracle Here
Cow
Anyone who knows me would not consider me miracle, believe me. Nightmare of the highest degree, maybe, but no stinkin' miracle.
Then it would be Angus O'Shaunessey??
CSS
> The probability of me existing is 1. If the requirement for a miracle is probability = 1 then that's not much of a benchmark.
The probability of you existing is 1 in 7 billion. As a human, the only thing you have in common with other humans, is that we are all different.
you are lucky
Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.”
Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
> The thread below discussing how things might have been different had the ending been different in 1865 brought to mind the very existence of each of us. Had that war ended differently the odds are that most of us here would not exist today. Everything that had to occur for your parents to have existed and to have created you at the very time they did qualifies as a miracle.
>
> Reflecting on my own case. The great-grandfather on one side of my family and the great-great-grandfather on a different side of my family at the very least might not have survived had the tables been reversed in 1865. In any event, their return home would have come at a different time and everything they did from that day forward would have been a bit different. Any changes at that level would have altered the destiny of the following generations leading up to me.
>
> On one side of my family I have an ancestor from Ireland in the mid 1700's who slapped his new stepmother because she was abusinve towards him and his siblings. Within a week, at age 14, he was put on a ship and sent to America to pacify her. Without that slap and ensuing banishment, hundreds (or more) of Americans and others would have never come to exist.
It does get complicated.
While the odds of any two atoms in the universe colliding with each other may be so small that approaches the impossible, I still stop and look both ways before proceeding at a stop sign.
CSS
> I'm trying to remember the logic, or the name of the fallacy. I'm afraid I can't at the moment.
It is the confusing of an a priori probability of a specific event with the a fortiori probability of a specific class of events.
Three interesting novels regarding this subject are:
"Time and Again" and "From Time to Time", by Jack Finney (who also wrote the novel that became the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers");
and "11-22-63", by Stephen King.
Aside from the general theme of the stories, each of them have some touching vignettes about "what if" and "what might have been" that are incidental to the overall plotlines.
True, True, but ...
I still want a Hoverboard dang it.
Even my mother, who would never choose a SciFi book to read, loved Time and Again. It's charming, I think is the right word.
There are many good books that take various views on the effects of time travel. Of course the ultimate paradox is in Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps" or "All You Zombies" Both titles were used for different versions of the same story idea.
Orson Scott Card took a less popular view of time travel in Pastwatch: The Redemption of Columbus. There, any change of the past means that the timeline the traveler came from never existed. Not subtle changes. His whole world is gone and he and everyone he knows probably won't be in whatever replaced it. It's a very readable and thought provoking book, although the ending of his alternate history has things getting too good, too fast.
Charming....I like that.
Of all the fiction I've read, if I had to pick one character to be, it might very well be Si Morley.
