Why everyone you meet is a very special person

Pretty mind boggling stuff!

The chances of you existing:
If you go back 10 generations (250 years) the chance of you being born at all is at most 1 divided by 6 x 10100 or
1 in 600000000000000000000000000000 00000 00000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000 000000.
In gambling, even a chance of 1 to 100 is not worth a gamble.
Are you ever lucky to be alive!!
If you go back 1 million years or 40 000 generations (each generation is considered 25 years), your chance of being born is at most 1 in 1.8 x 10403167 or
18 with 403,166 zeros after the 1.
In other words your chances of existing is essentially zilch, even if we were considering this possibility only a short 250 years ago.
Right now you do exist, so the actual chance is 100%, but the predicted likelihood in the past of you being born would be essentially zero.
The calculations of these numbers (calculations shown below) tend to overestimate your chances of being.
They only include numbers based on your father's contribution, his father's contribution, his father contribution, and so on. In other words the calculations are based only on the direct male line.
They do NOT include the following factors that would make the chances of your existence even less:
- your mother's contribution
- the men and women that died in war, famine, disease without or with fewer offspring-- in some generations 50% of humanity.
- the men and women that died from natural causes.
- children that died before reaching the age of reproduction.
- fetuses and fertilized eggs that died and were naturally aborted.
You are the result of many generations of survivors. One of the people that died prematurely could have been your Dad or your Dad's Dad and so on. Somehow, none of your forefathers died before passing on his genes to the next man in your lineage. Because of the deaths mentioned most human lineages died out, while luckily yours survived. Lo and behold, here you are!
Because of these deaths, your odds of existing were actually much less than the odds given below.
The Calculations:
As mentioned above, these calculations assume only your father, his father, his father, and so on. The number of sperm produced by your father is astronomical compared to the number of eggs produced by your mother, so this is a reasonable procedure to show how slight your existence chances were.
Also I am assuming that each separate reproductive generation consists of 25 years

Some background statistics based on the book "Sperm Wars" by Robin Baker, University of Manchester.
On average a man between puberty (I suggest age 15 y) and 30 years produces 300 million sperm/day (300,000,000).
On average a man between 30 y and 50 years produces 230 million sperm/day (230,000,000)
On average a man between 50 and 75 years produces 50 million sperm/day (50,000,000)

The last two sperm/day numbers were calculated as follows:
At age 50 years the average man produces 175 million/day -- so averaging 300 million/day and 175 million/day you get 230 million/day.
At age 70 years the average man produces 20 million/day -- so I could average 175 million and 20 million, but to be on the safe side I decreased it to 50 million/day (keeping my results on the conservative side -- I will round lower for the calculations that follow).
Each sperm has a unique set of DNA.
These sperm will appear in intercourse, masturbation, nocturnal emission. They all have to go somewhere.

On average 2 to 3 offspring survive that will reproduce. This average seems to be fairly constant in modern societies, agricultural societies and in hunter-gatherer societies. So, for all generations it hovers around 2 to 3 reproducing survivors. On average, 2 to 3 sperm will result in the fertilization of eggs that results in 2 or 3 reproducing individuals -- the rest of the sperm are doomed.
Kind of sperm:
An average man produces 3 kind of sperm:
(1) Killer Sperm constitute about 83% of all the sperm -- these are sperm that attack any sperm from another man that may be in the woman. These sperm carry a lethal dose of poison in their head, seek out foreign sperm and inject it with this poison, killing it. Apparently after a few injections the Killer Sperm has spent all it's energy and also dies.
(2) Blocker Sperm constitute about 16% of all the sperm -- these try to block entrances and storage places so that any sperm from another man cannot reach the woman's egg.
(3) Egg Getter Sperm constitute about1% of all the sperm -- these are the sperm that can possibly fertilize the woman's egg if they ever get there.
So 99% of sperm make war on other men's sperm to annihilate them so that they won't fertilize the woman's egg, and 1% have the potential to fertilize the woman's egg.

In our calculations we will only use the numbers for the Egg Getter Sperm.
The Actual numbers:
(A) The number of Egg Getter Sperm produced by an average man in his lifetime:

In the following calculations I will round off the numbers lower to be even more conservative.
(1) Between puberty (15 years old) and 30 years:
At a rate of 1% of 300,000,000 = 3,000,000 Egg Getter Sperm/day
15 years has 5475 days.
Therefore, on average a man will produce 5475 days x 3,000,000 Egg Getter Sperm/day = 1.6 x 1010 Egg Getter Sperm during this time (16,000,000,000).
(2) Between 30 years and 50 years:
At a rate of 1% of 230,000,000 = 2,300,000 Egg Getter Sperm/day
20 years has 7300 days.
Therefore, on average a man will produce 7300 days x 2,300,000 Egg Getter Sperm/day = 1.6 x 1010 Egg Getter Sperm during this time (16,000,000,000).
(3) Between 50 years and 75 years:
At a rate of 1% of 50,000,000 = 500,000 Egg Getter Sperm/day
25 years has 9125 days.
Therefore, on average a man will produce 9125 days x 500,000 Egg Getter Sperm/day = 4 x 109 Egg Getter Sperm during this time (4,000,000,000).
On average, in a man's lifetime he produces 16,000,000,000 + 16,000,000,000 + 4,000,000,000 = 36,000,000,000 Egg Getter Sperm for a possible 36,000,000,000 unique offspring (3.6 x 1010).
If you care to read more see source link to the rest of the mind blowing calculations. here's the Source

Additionally here's an Infographic with a slightly different twist on an conclusion that's exactly the same. ZERO CHANCE

enjoy

pyramider's Avatar
Alas, there you are ...
Dorian Gray's Avatar
Soooooooo you're telling me its math fault some of you are alive?
Fuck you math
TheAntichrist666's Avatar
Nice info.
chicagoboy's Avatar
Hooktard math.
boardman's Avatar
TL;DR
Wakeup's Avatar
Must be more of that "precious snowflake" bullshit I hear all the time from parents...
pyramider's Avatar
I just reread the crap, not one taint notation.
boardman's Avatar
Can I get a reader's digest condensed version?
Brooke Wilde's Avatar
Please only post stuff this boring from September - November or January - May.

Thanks!
Please only post stuff this boring from September - November or January - May.

Thanks! Originally Posted by Brooke Wilde
It's disappointing that so many find this type of "advanced" and "deep thinking" boring. Imagine what would happen to society if all of our deep thinkers and Engineers died off. We'd be back in the stone age. No airplanes and cars to rap about and no more bling bling to brag about.
Can I get a reader's digest condensed version? Originally Posted by boardman

No but what you can do is stop pretending the article isn't interesting and put on your reading spectacles. Just imagine they're talking about the life and existence of Cats.
Soooooooo you're telling me its math fault some of you are alive?
Fuck you math Originally Posted by Dorian Gray
After all of the other insane mathematical odds on top of this one, we finally get to the example of the Atlantic ocean in the Infographic.

What are the odds that the one egg (Sally) met the one sperm (Harry) which together made you and not your brother?

1 in 400,000,000,000,000,000 (1 in 400 quadrillion) which is ~ the volume in cubic meters of the Atlantic Ocean. (3.236x10^17 Cubic meters)

...and then the calculations morph into more insane figures.
Please only post stuff this boring from September - November or January - May.

Thanks! Originally Posted by Brooke Wilde


Soooooooo you're telling me its math fault some of you are alive?
Fuck you math Originally Posted by Dorian Gray
right? if that's the case math should be castrated with a f'ckin sickle.
boardman's Avatar
No but what you can do is stop pretending the article isn't interesting and put on your reading spectacles. Just imagine they're talking about the life and existence of Cats. Originally Posted by Zanzibar789
Cat's think they are immortal...We could care less.