The Odds of Existence

in life anything is possible because we can never fully understand how the world works and the laws of physics prevent us from being able to tell the future everything we predict is a probability some are a lot more probable others are less probable while some have astronomically low chances of ever happening the probability is vanishingly small but it remains non-zero would you get hit by a car will you get struck by lightning will we ever achieve world peace if there is a chance that anything can happen what are the odds i was scrolling through the deepest parts of the internet one day when i came across this man roy cleveland sullivan the man who has been hit by lightning seven times in his lifetime the odds of getting struck by lightning once isn't that low it's just about one in fifteen thousand even if you live in a small town chances are that somebody in that town has been struck by lightning at least once the odds of being struck 7 times in a period of 80 years that's a 1 in 10 to the 28 chance this seems like such incredible and unfortunate odds until you consider the fact that you're more likely to get struck by lightning seven times than you are to shuffle a deck of cards into perfect numerical order those odds 1 in 10 to the 68 probability is something that we can't really comprehend as humans if we did we'd stop worrying about a lot of things and stop taking granted from most of the things we should be worried about like sharks no thanks to the movie jaws humans now have an immense fear of sharks but the reality is you're more likely to get killed by a vending machine than you are to get killed by a shark the odds of getting killed by a vending machine are 1 in 112 million while the odds of getting killed by a shark are staggering 1 in 250 million now the odds that you'll be attacked by a shark are much lower at 1 in 3.7 million but even that is still too high for the monsters we've branded sharks to be for context you're more likely to get killed by a dog at a 1 in 112 400 chance than you are to get killed by a shark but we still keep them in our homes as loving pets you're more likely to get killed by hornets wasps or bees at 1 in 63 225 then you already get killed by a shark in fact you're more likely going to get killed by the government for committing murder at 1 in 119 000 than you are of getting killed by a shark when you put a little thought into it you realize that most of the time our fears are sensational and not rational when something tragic happens and it garners a lot of public attention we are more likely to be afraid of that thing even if it is much less common than the less notorious things the most prominent example of this is the way we treat plane crashes now yes when planes do crash it is tragic but because they cause such a big spectacle and have lots of media coverage we forget that it is still by far the safest way to travel passenger airplane incidents are very rare and your odds of dying in a plane crash are very slim at 1 in 205 000 that's incredibly low when you compare it to your odds of dying in a car accident which is just one in 107. for motorcycle riders it's 1 in 890 and even pedestrians aren't safe at 1 in 541. but wait maybe the reason the airplane deaths are so low has to do something with our fear before people go on an airplane they usually prepare well in advance no harmful objects are allowed on board and there's always usually more than one designated pilot who was trained for years on safety practices before they were ever allowed to fly a plane compare that to road travel where we don't really think that much about it and you can maybe see why things are the way they are and with the odds that you'll be involved in a drunk driving accident in your lifetime being incredibly high at two and three you can see what i mean we barely give it any thought hopefully we can all do better try to reduce the risk by simply designating a driver beforehand or taking an uber when you go out for fun another thing we should be worried about is right-handed appliances yes it's true that most of the world is right-handed for some reason but if we're learning anything as a species it's inclusiveness we must do the same with dominant hands because as it is the odds of a left-handed person dying simply because they used a right-handed appliance wrong is one in seven million and while the chances look ridiculously slim it has to happen to somebody if you don't die hey you'll get a lot of free money from that lawsuit the ambidextrous people among us can help us decide what appliances are better suited for what dominant hand and we have a surprising amount of them 1 in 100 to be exact now this does not include people who have had to learn how to use their non-dominant hand because of injury or out of curiosity it's just people who are born with an amazing control of both of their hands art is very subjective what some people might find beautiful others will find ugly what one might consider great acting others might see it as over-the-top and annoying you see much unlike science art doesn't have a definitive set of rules and so they don't have a strict guideline for judgment either and while this allows for creativity it also makes it very difficult to find success in the world of the arts if you want to be a surgeon for instance you know that if you pass the med school exams intern go through residency and so forth you'll make it you have a set path to follow but if you want to be a super model or a rock star or a youtuber it's not that straightforward you have to work hard at it every single day and even then your odds are very slim you can be a theater kid all your life go to film school practice as much as possible but in the end the odds that you'll become a movie star aren't very encouraging at just one in 1.1 million it's amazing so that even with the odds as slim as this every year thousands of people will travel from all parts of the world to la trying to fulfill their dreams of being on the big screen when interestingly you have a much better chance of winning an oscar at just one in 11 500 than becoming a movie star but of course this oscar includes all the technical awards that are given when everyone is taking a bathroom break and most people would much rather take a 1 in 1.1 million chance than to receive an award when no one's watching if you're a writer however the odds are slightly in your favor there's a 1 in 220 chance that you'll write a new york times best seller if you put in the time and the effort necessary these odds are definitely going to go up bringing you that inch closer to making your dream a reality sports are closer related to science than arts because most of the time if you work at it hard enough you'll achieve some kind of success but how hard can you work when there's only so many medals to go around millions of people around the world dedicate their entire lives to competing in the olympics yet only one in 662 000 will ever win a medal and that's the thing about scarcity when there's such limited space the odds of ever being able to do or acquire said thing just gets increasingly thinner think about the number of children who have worn a space suit and helmet to career day in school and told everybody that they want to be astronauts now think about the fact that the odds of becoming an astronaut are 1 in 12.1 million and you get sad for those little kids whose dreams will one day have to be crushed what if they wanted to be president well the chance of becoming a us president is one in 10 million unless you're a religious six foot tall harvard law graduate and military veteran then your odds go up astronomically especially if you're a harvard alumni because as surprising as it might sound the odds that the president of america has attended harvard is one in 3.58 so if you want to have the best chance at becoming president you know what school to apply for however getting into harvard is almost as difficult as becoming president when you're done with a chance of just 4.6 percent of getting in you might want to apply to some backup schools as well at the end of the day we all just want to be successful whether it's through the arts or going through the so-called traditional route of finishing college and getting a good job we all just want to have enough money to live comfortably while we're still young but sadly the odds are stacked against us there's a slim chance of just between 6.4 and 22.3 that you'll become a millionaire with different factors like race education wealth status and age helping to place you somewhere in that range while the chance of becoming a billionaire well there's 8 billion humans in the world and only around 2 000 billionaires so basically non-existent getting old has a bittersweet taste to it on the one hand you're getting wiser more mature and you have a much better understanding of the world than you did when you were younger but on the other hand you're also getting weaker you're forgetting things more and sadly your body just keeps breaking down one after the other and the stats don't really help at all if you're under 20 right now there's a one in four chance that you'll be disabled before you retire and it gets worse there's a one in two chance that at the age of 75 you'll have disabling hearing loss this is why whenever people say they want to work hard now so they can enjoy their retirement i kind of feel bad for them because most times at that age you don't really get to enjoy anything all you can really do is sit around and reminisce on a life that once was and when the grim reaper comes you say goodbye to your loved ones and move on and that's why you should do everything you want to do right now for some reason there's a seven percent higher chance that you'll die on your birthday than on any other day going out together with the candles but for a few of us living to 100 is possible with the odds of that happening being approximately 1 in 5 780 with those odds increasing significantly if you're biologically a woman on the other hand of the spectrum one of the most incredible human achievements is being born if you're here watching this video right now you deserve a round of applause you ran you fought you survived and against all odds you made it the odds of you existing were 1 in 5.5 trillion but here you are you might have been the one in 20 chance of being born on your mom's exact due date or you're like most of us who are born around 2 weeks before or after you might be the one in 250 who are geniuses burdened with the weight of advancing our civilization or like the rest of us who are cheering them on whoever you are whatever it took you to get here that was an incredible feat one that is unrepeatable not in this lifetime at least today's video was sponsored by the great course wait i mean one dream an on-demand video service with thousands of in-depth videos taught by the world's greatest professors they rebranded as we've seen the odds of existing are quite slim but yet here we all are thinking about the sheer probability of it all is really hard to grasp but that in itself is hopefully enough to make you value what it means to be alive it's learning about things like these that can really change your entire perspective with one dream you can get access to over 11 000 video lectures available to you at any moment making it one of the best places you can go to learn about almost any topic everyone wonders about something it's what makes us human keeps us driven and fuels our passions one dream is the place for everyone who has ever wondered about anything they offer insight into topics in extreme detail so it's a great place to dive into almost anything for this video i actually watched the probability course titled what are the chances and it really helped set the tone for this video i don't want to spoil it so test it out and see things for yourself check out onedrive.com and you can start watching for free in as little as 10 minutes you'll not only be enjoying yourself and learning valuable information but you'll also be supporting my channel at the same time [Music] you

Channel: Aperture

Views: 379,206

Keywords: aperture, yt:cc=on, The Odds of Existence, what are the odds, odds of everything, what are the chances, odds of winning the lottery, odds, existence, odds of life, odds of alien life, odds you exist, what is the probability of life, probability of life, life, odds of getting pregnant, odds of being born, impossible odds, what is the chance of you being born

Id: YE9xR8Cahwg

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021