
Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous - likeaj6
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/human-existence-will-look-more-miraculous-the-longer-we-survive/554513/?single_page=true
======
natch
It brings to mind the sentient mud puddle.

If a mud puddle were sentient, it might marvel at how the mud around it was so
perfectly shaped so as to exactly match the shape of the water the puddle was
made up of. Amazing. Unbelievable. Couldn't be a coincidence, that there's
such a perfect fit. What are the chances that this unique shape of the water
outline would be matched exactly by the shape of the mud around it. A true
miracle, it might think.

Unless the sentient puddle gave the matter just one more moment's thought, in
which case it might conclude that the water and the shape of the mud around it
matched for no reason other than that the water flowed to fit the mud.

~~~
yters
The anthropic principle doesn't make our universe any less surprising. It's
like saying "of course I survived that catastrophic accident, otherwise I
wouldn't be observing the fact I survived the accident."

~~~
baddox
The difference is that we have a decent amount of information on the number of
catastrophic accidents that occur and the number of people who survive them.
Since that number is known to be low, there’s nothing unsurprising about your
own survival of such an accident.

But we don’t know the number of times life has emerged in the universe, except
that it is at least 1. Every intelligent life form we are aware of are one
“survivor,” but we knew very little about the number of total survivors in the
universe. Thus it is a little odd for us to claim that our “survival” is
surprising.

~~~
randallsquared
I haven’t read the article, yet, so I’m not sure it didn’t mention this, but
the fact that the universe we see appears natural and unworked is a powerful
argument for the number of “survivors” being ultra-low.

~~~
erric
Or maybe we’re just first? Depressing either way.

------
roywiggins
This is a good way to solve problems in NP. First, guess an answer uniformly
at random. Check if it's correct (in polynomial time). If it isn't, blow up
the planet. Conditioned on surviving, you also have solved the NP problem in
polynomial time.

You can also use a world-ending device to prove that this reasoning works.
Blow up the world with probability .99999999999. Conditioned on surviving, you
will then be nearly certain that quantum hell is real- more certain than about
nearly any other physical theory.

The other problem is that depending on how you count, almost all observers are
actually hallucinating Boltzmann brains. There are duplicates of us, but there
are arguably even more pocket universes with hallucinating brains that just
very briefly remember being something like us and then die.

So that's not very reassuring.

------
seiferteric
What a great trippy article... most pop-sci articles are not worth reading,
but this one really held my attention the whole time. Even though I have heard
of a lot of these ideas before, I never heard them put together in this way,
like your consciousness is a thread in the multiverse constantly avoiding
destruction! I always thought if the multiworlds thing was true, it would be
like each person living their lives unaware of the others... but maybe not.
Pretty weird to think about and probably we will never know... All though if I
end up living to 1000+ years old, maybe I will become convinced.

------
ideonexus
This principle is also why creationists don't understand how the world around
us seems so engineered for us. That's because it was engineered... by our
ancestors. The peach is a great example of this. Peaches didn't exist 3,000
years ago, but were engineered from a bitter, mostly-pit fruit through
artificial selection into what we enjoy today. The same is true of corn,
tomatoes, lettuce, cows, chickens, and so many other agricultural products.
These things never existed in nature, we engineered them, but we just see the
end result.

A fascinating aspect of this I learned about recently was the importance of
fire to human development. I always imagined this tool in the context of
humans huddled around a campfire for warmth and cooking, but our ancestors
actually applied it on a much more epic scale. They burned down entire forests
to create open fields where predators couldn't hide and where they could
forage for well-cooked critters amid the ashes. Everywhere we migrated, we
geoengineered forests into savannas.

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mikeytown2
Makes me think about the Fermi paradox [1] and Great Filters [2]. But for all
we know the universe could be full of life at chimpanzee intelligence; no way
to know unless we send probes [3] or seriously up our telescopes [4].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_\(spacecraft\))

~~~
danieltillett
The Fermi paradox is unlikely to be answered by something making it very
unlikely for our chimp level ancestors jumping to human level. The number of
Homo species on the planet that co-evolved to human level intelligence
suggests this is not extremely difficult.

What is a huge filter is the requirement of a stable climate over million of
years. The key to this is the Moon which keeps the Earth's axis of rotation
from wandering over a wide angle on geological timescales. The Moon is so
large and unlikely (we still don't have a good theory for how it was formed
and captured by the Earth) that this alone could explain the lack of other
intelligent life in the visible universe.

~~~
RobertoG
>>"[..] Homo species on the planet that co-evolved to human level intelligence
[..]"

Can you elaborate on this? I'm a little at lost about what you mean.

~~~
danieltillett
There were at least two other _Homo_ species that co-evolved to human level
intelligence separate from the one that arose in sub-Sahran Africa. The reason
we know this because at least two inbred with the African _Homo sapiens_ ;
_Homo neanderthalensis_ and _Homo_ “Desnisovan” [0].

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_humans)

------
sgt101
Once I dreamed that I lived through a nuclear war, I dreamed the aftermath and
my life scraping and scrapping through a shredded world. The dream brought me
to the house in the woods where I live now, but in that world it was tattered
and burned and no children lived there. I laid down, grateful for a dry spot
and a wall that split the wind. I woke here, but not there.

------
nicolashahn
The article mentions Max Tegmark; if you thought this content was interesting
I highly recommend reading Tegmark's book _Our Mathematical Universe._ A
totally mind expanding read.

~~~
drb91
It is the most satisfying GUT I have seen described, even if it isn’t
rigorous, formal, etc. It simply satisfies my inner voice saying “the feeling
that we are special in any way is wrong”.

Naturally, that’s only true for a very emotional level of special :) but so
far, I’m happy with _just_ the specialness of being a massively complex life
form.

------
kldavis4
Many worlds hypothesis is the atheistic solution to the observation that our
universe appears to be tuned for life.

~~~
DoubleCribble
Not so long ago, it was scientific dogma that all life on this planet was
dependent upon photosynthesis. Then some oceanographer types sent some cameras
down to the sea floor to look at some hydrothermal vents and... there went
that idea! Is our universe tuned for life or is life tuned to its universe?

~~~
kldavis4
That would be a great comparison if the many worlds hypothesis were proven or
even provable. As it stands, it is basically just a belief which is held to
explain the scientific facts. Not much different from ancient man's belief
that spirits had influence over the weather cycle. Check out
[https://strangenotions.com/flew/](https://strangenotions.com/flew/)

~~~
simonh
Many worlds is an interpretation of quantum uncertainly, but what we seem to
be talking about here are multiverse theories.

One of these, M-Theory is an extension of string theory and is the only theory
known to elegantly unify quantum mechanics with general relativity's
gravitational force in a mathematically consistent way. It’s not supported by
experimental evidence yet, but I’d hardly characterise it as no different from
belief in spirits.

~~~
kldavis4
Actually, I _am_ referring to 'many worlds' (at least according to the
technical explanation in this article:
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/26/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/26/are-
many-worlds-and-the-multiverse-the-same-idea/#.WqxexpPwbh8)) and not a
multiverse. And yes, there is some hope that there will be some testable
empirical evidence at some point, but if in the end it turns out that there
are not 'many worlds', then I don't see that big a difference. I'd love it if
there were parallel dimensions but it is fantasy at this point.

~~~
akvadrako
Really your arguments work equally well for any multiverse theory, be it
quantum or cosmological or mathematical.

------
lopmotr
I didn't get through the whole thing, but if there are big meteor impacts,
wouldn't we see them on other planets in the solar system? They mention Hale-
Bop for instance. Surely we can work out a probability distribution from the
evidence we have besides Earth.

~~~
stevenwoo
The two largest impact craters we know of are on the Moon and Mars, and those
happened about four billion years ago. Of course we'll never know for the gas
giants. Not doing the math, but this makes the odds seem pretty low after the
initial "flurry" of our solar system's birth, barring Jupiter perturbing an
existing asteroid into a collision into earth.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_craters_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_craters_in_the_Solar_System)

------
baking
I think this provides a new answer to the "Great Filter" question. Is it
before us or after us? The answer is both.

------
mrsparks85
"It could be that we’ve been shielded from these existential threats by our
very existence."

Lots of misleading casualty statements like this in the article.

Still enjoyed it.

------
8bitsrule
Kind of ironic to think that humans survived a million-year ice age, then
might be destroyed by some fool with a button.

If 'our universe' is 'tuned for life', it certainly isn't specifically tuned
for human life (e.g. plague, volcanos). Nature offers us no guarantees. Unless
we stay in tune with that accord, we will be removed.

~~~
stevenwoo
Aren't homo sapiens here only because an asteroid strike around 70 million
years ago caused a culling that killed the dinosaurs and sort of reset life to
favor small mammals over the dinosaurs? If perhaps that had not hit the earth,
we would not be here and something that evolved from dinosaurs would be the
top of the food chain and typing comments here! We had to get that one strike
in at the right time (from our perspective) and then not another semi-
apocalyptic event to get to here.

------
tmills
Trippy article. Wikipedia, as always, is a good place for a deeper dive into
this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle)

------
digitalantfarm
That's the stuff of nightmares right there.

~~~
russdill
Kinda bums me out that with data on so many galaxies, we see absolutely zero
evidence so far for any galaxy wide effects from intelligent life. It seems
likely that intelligent life arising in a single galaxy is rare, and that it's
almost certain we are the only intelligent species in our own.

------
bsenftner
Great mind fuck.

------
dougdonohoe
I can't help but think of what the 17 families in Parkland, Florida would
think of this article. Especially this quote:

“This is a defense against instantaneous, violent death, which you will find
was avoided, but anything that sort of maims or injures or mangles you or
whatever is still fair game.”

~~~
burnte
On the macro scale, he's right. On the human scale, however, your number could
be up any second. When I get into debates with people about security and the
erosion of rights under the guise of security, I'll eventually say, "You can
only be so safe. In the end a determined killer WILL kill someone, even if
it's only by biting them to death. There WILL be successful terror attacks.
There WILL be random attacks of violence, the question is, how much freedom do
I want to lose before I realize that there will always be danger in the
world?" That makes people feel I'm a nihilist or something, but it's the
truth. I enjoy living, I Want safety for people, but we can't wrap the world
in Nerf. Life is a trap no one gets out of alive. If you're alive today,
you're lucky nothing killed you along the way, enjoy it while you can. With
stuff like the Florida school shooting, we should absolutely do something
about guns and gun culture because it's needlessly killing kids. But making me
take off y belt at the airport isn't saving anyone, or worse, saying the TSA
/customs/the gov't in general should have the right to my passwords to get
into my computer because "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing
to hide" is absolutely terrifying and wrong.

