We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here in my place outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here.
Richard Dawkins
I think about this almost every day. Consequently it irks me that the increasingly clichéd question “what is the meaning of life?” has been epitomized in popular ontology. We are each the winner of the universe’s ultimate lottery, and our response is “It must be a game. Who has some cheat codes?”
Andreas Nurbo says
Personally I think its a stupid quote. The number of people that could be in his place is 0.
What happens happened and could never have happened any other way.
What doesn’t happen never happened and could never have happened anyway.
//paraphrase, Ramana Mharashi.
Dawkins should stick to promoting evolution when he ventures into other areas it usually ends up as crap.
Mark says
If we’re going to be fatalistic, it isn’t a stupid quote. It’s the only quote he could have made. As with your your comment. As with mine.
But our entire society and system of laws is based on free will existing. If it is an illusion (and I’m not convinced that it is), it is such a convincing illusion that we can consider it effectively simulated. I’m glad I don’t live in a world where people can harm each other with impunity and blame fate for their actions.
Jesop says
In Dawkins’ world view our specific collection of genes might as well just be computer bits. So imagine you are random bits. Each arrangement of bits is as likely as the next. 11111111 is as likely as 10010010. If you’re 10100100, does it really matter to you that 01100101 has never existed?