Cheat Engine

[Codeslinger]

Cliff notes at bottom

Homo sapiens in the form we are today have been around at least 50,000 years, and much longer in our less evolved forms.

You would think that, assuming we rolled some kind of celestial dice before life to determine which human we were born as (even religion at least agrees that its random), there would be an unthinkably low chance of being born within the last century -- where we have highly developed technology and life is unbelievably good compared to what we've had in the past.

But really, the chances are not so low if you do the math.

About 106 billion people have ever lived on Earth -- this is a rough estimate of course, but is an educated estimate based on science.

Today we have nearly 7 billion people walking the Earth.

If you divide 106 into 7, that gives us about a 6% chance of having been born as one of the 7 billion people that are alive today.

Six percent is small, but considerably higher than the percentage you'd get if you divided 50,000 years into 1. There is only a 1 in 20 chance of being born to see the year 2010, but that is still much higher than the chance of being born in the year 6,000 BC or 20,000 BC (because we have far more people now than we did then).

This is important because we should know how lucky we are to be alive in this period of time, right when technology flourishes. But unless you actually do the rough math as I have here to find out that there actually a plausible (very low, but quite plausible) chance of being born right now, then the number seems so ridiculously low that we can't even appreciate it because our minds simply can't believe it. We instead think of the chances being as impossible, or possible only by divine intervention.

One thing is certain -- I am quite happy to be the lucky one out of the 20 other individuals who did not get picked to live in this time. We are among the elite in the celestial scale of things.

But if we believe in religion and/or spirituality, new questions arise:

Did we simply roll lucky dice to be the 1 out of 20, or were we picked based on our deeds in a previous life?

Think of it this way: What if our deeds are judged, and those who did well are granted another life in the technology rich times of human beings (around 1960 and on)? Where those who did not do well, are punished by being born in earlier times where humans had comparatively nothing?


Cliff notes: 1 in 20 chance that we are alive today, if you assume that the particular human which we are born as is chosen at random.

Important because you'd think the chances would be nearly non-existant if you don't consider the fact that we have a way higher population now than we've had in the past, and understanding this helps put our rarity into perspective as far as considering whether or not life in 2010 is so outrageously rare that divine intervention is the only explanation for it having been possible for yourself.

[elpacco]

This is also stupid and has no point, just like your last thread. You just wrote more in this one.

[ArcaneKnite]

How can you consider us the elite when we are not even at the pinnacle of our evolution.

I'm sure people back in the 1500s thought they were the greatest things ever, but that isn't true.