Show HN: The Lottery of Life

al_borland

I was not aware 95% of all life was nematodes and beetles.

dash2

I got 15 nematodes in a row which seems a lot even for an 80% chance. Update: so now I learned something about compounding as well as about nematodes. Prob is about 0.03, much more than I’d have guessed.

breppp

There was a game using this mechanic called RealLives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Lives_(video_game) You had a random chance at being born anywhere in the world weighted by population. A big lesson from the game is if you are born in Africa and you survive childhood, your best bet is somehow immigrating to the West

soulchild37

The random seed seems fixed, I tried 100 clicks and get Nematode

gregjw

I think we're all Nematodes.

applfanboysbgon

I've thought about this a lot in the past, and it seems like the strongest argument for our existence being a simulation. What are the odds of being born a human and not a bacteria, a fly, or, apparently, a nematode? What are the odds that I would be born into a wealthy country? What are the odds that I would be born into what appears to be the end of history -- the most prosperous species in the most prosperous time of Earth's 4 billion year history of life, where I can live comfortably, but technology has created multiple civilization-ending threats that will probably come into fruition shortly after I am gone (should I be so lucky)? The only thing that gives me pause is that if this is a simulation, the beings that created it are evil for creating both a world so full of suffering and a simulation so detailed (from my own perspective) that we fully experience such suffering. For what purpose could simulations like this possibly serve, I wonder. Does it entertain such hypothetical higher beings, in the way that we create murder simulations to entertain ourselves? Or is it somehow informative, although we'd expect the simulation to be much lower resolution than the universe it's being run in? Maybe we're just in some random gambler or forecaster's model, which is not wholly accurate but with sufficient fidelity may gain a couple of percentage points in predictive power.

bronlund

The building blocks of an organism, is cells, and an elephant has roughly 5 billion times the cell count than a nematode. So I think it is unfair to only count the single organisms.

aldino97

Nematode i hate you

DoctorOetker

This probability is drawing proportional to organism counts, instead of brain cell counts. Would it not be more representative if the weighting included neuron counts? In a sense I ascribe to the belief of such a lottery, except that we are all the same "I", we just alternatively wake up as physics evaluating the progress for this or that electron, proton etc in this or that rock or neuron and progressing the state indeterministically according to the rules of physics. Our identity is a pragmatic illusion (just like the illusion that water is a continuus medium, is a pragmatic one, as it helps summarize the behavior of water). Imagine an amnesiac elder in an elderly home, still knows the rules of chess, but can't form long term memories any more: its his turn, and he's playing black, there is a small notebook with his plans and strategies, jotted down during the earlier turns, he makes some notes and then a move. The caretakers turn around the chess board, swap the black notebook with the white notebook and leave the amnesiac bewildered for a few minutes. Then he reads his earlier notes in the white notebook, deliberates his options and makes a move, with a white piece. The caretakers turn the chess board around again. This is physics, and the "player" is you, me, everyone, and we are physics . The notebook is the state of your brain, and your move is indeterminate physics (with deterministic probabilities) evolving the state of the universe. Does identity exist: yes! as a pragmatic summary, even natural selection latched onto this illusion out of necessity. Weighting by neurons will be more representative, of universal experience in the earthly biosphere.

todteera

got humbled by the amount of times I got nematode

satisfice

This thing doesn’t have bacteria? Virii?