The Realization That Life Is Absurd Is Only the Beginning...

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0:12 Currently, every year approximately 60 to 70

0:15 million people leave [music] this earth, this existence.

0:19 We don't know where they go, if anywhere.

0:22 We don't know what happens,

0:24 [music] if anything.

0:25 Every day, that number is approximately 175,000 people.

0:29 On a daily basis, entire lineages come to an end.

0:33 Chunks of generations [music] are torn off.

0:35 Hundreds of thousands of families are fragmented,

0:38 hearts broken, psyches forever altered.

0:40 Each individual's departure taking with them pieces of this earth [music]

0:44 and those who remain.

0:46 One day, that will be you.

0:48 The day will be yours,

0:49 and it will be you who departs and leaves behind [music] a changed world.

0:53 It's appallingly cliché to say that we never know when that day will come,

0:57 when it will be [music] ours.

0:59 Though it's true, of course.

1:00 For the most part, for most of us, [music] we don't know.

1:04 But we can estimate.

1:06 We can estimate, for example, what the odds are of dying tomorrow.

1:11 On average, every [music] day, the odds that a person dies,

1:14 of any age and any health, are approximately 1 in 47,000.

1:19 That's about a 0.002% chance.

1:22 This figure is a rough approximation based

1:24 on global population and average mortality numbers.

1:27 It's meaningfully skewed by individuals both in the very

1:29 early and very late stages of life,

1:31 as well as those with pre-existing ailments and health conditions.

1:34 If rather, you're around 30 years old and reasonably healthy,

1:37 obviously, your odds of dying tomorrow go considerably down.

1:40 [music] But of course, not to zero.

1:43 It's never zero until it's happened.

1:46 Variables like your lifestyle, the place you live,

1:49 the things and people you encounter, the risks you take,

1:51 your sex, and so on, all also change the odds up or down for you.

1:56 Thrill seekers tend to have a much higher chance of premature death.

1:59 Females, in general, tend to have a much lower one.

2:04 There are many ways to die prematurely and unexpectedly.

2:07 Some are far less pleasant.

2:08 Some are far more absurd.

2:10 Annually, there's roughly a one in 112 million

2:13 chance that you die because of a vending machine.

2:16 That's clearly very unlikely, but it's actually almost three times

2:19 more likely than winning the Powerball jackpot.

2:22 And people win that [music] every year.

2:24 Annually, there's a one in 11 million chance

2:26 you die because of an elevator or escalator.

2:29 There's about a one in a million chance you die because of a tree,

2:31 about the same chance you die because of a bathtub,

2:34 one in a 160,000 chance by a natural disaster,

2:37 one in about 50,000 by choking, one in 40,000 by fire,

2:41 a one in 17,000 chance of a heat-related death in any given year,

2:45 which is also the same chance as being killed by another human annually.

2:48 There's a one in 16,000 chance you die by accidental overdose,

2:52 and a one in 7,000 chance by a car accident.

2:56 Altogether, assuming you're a 30-year-old healthy male,

2:59 the odds that you die tomorrow of an unforeseeable,

3:01 non-health or age-related event are approximately one in 250,000.

3:06 That's about a 0.0004% chance.

3:10 If you're a 30-year-old healthy female,

3:12 the odds go down to about one in 800,000, about three times less likely.

3:17 All this is calculated roughly from data

3:19 on age-specific deaths by external causes,

3:22 averaged out across the year, totaled up, and then converted into daily odds.

3:26 For most of us, none of these sorts of aforementioned events will happen.

3:30 In all likelihood, you can go to bed tonight and be confident

3:33 that tomorrow morning your eyes [music] will open and your day will be full.

3:37 Same with the next day, and the next day, and the next day.

3:41 Of course, however, [music] with each tomorrow,

3:43 regardless of the ultimate cause of your death, your odds inevitably climb.

3:48 Old age becomes your age.

3:49 Possibilities become probable.

3:51 [music] Instead of tomorrow,

3:53 the odds you die in the next year of an unforeseeable external

3:56 event for an average healthy 30-year-old male are roughly 1 in 700.

4:01 The odds within the next decade [music] are roughly 1 in 70.

4:05 Things only get a lot worse from there.

4:07 And if we include health and age-related causes,

4:09 [music] the odds that a 30-year-old male dies within the next

4:12 decade are 1 in 37 [music] or nearly a 3% chance.

4:17 Still low, but getting eerily [music] starting.

4:21 Of course, by far the most common cause of death [music] is life.

4:26 Being born is the guarantor of it.

4:28 If you're alive right now, [music] the chances you die are ultimately 1 in 1.

4:33 When considered in these terms, with death being contingent on life,

4:37 [music] in a broader and deeper sense, the odds of dying don't go up.

4:41 They become infinitesimal.

4:43 This is because the odds of being born, being alive, [music]

4:46 are so preposterously tiny, dying becomes a kind of miracle.

4:51 For you specifically to exist, to have been born,

4:54 of course, [music] your mother and father had to exist.

4:56 They had to exist in a similar area of the world or [music]

4:59 happen to visit and be in the same area at the same time.

5:02 They also had to meet.

5:04 It's estimated that for two specific people to meet within a lifetime,

5:07 it is a roughly 1 in 20,000 chance.

5:10 That's less likely than you being killed by another human this [music] year.

5:14 And that's just meeting.

5:16 Your parents had to do a lot more than that.

5:18 [music]

5:18 They had to meet within a specific time window that allowed for reproduction,

5:21 and they had to like each other enough in [music] some way to reproduce.

5:25 What are the odds of attraction?

5:27 What are the odds of love?

5:29 Incalculable.

5:31 All of that is before the dance even starts.

5:34 A female human body has approximately 300,000 eggs.

5:37 A male can have as many as several

5:38 trillions of sperm cells across their lifetime.

5:42 [music] The odds that a specific egg and a specific

5:43 sperm combine and produce a specific person [music]

5:46 are less than one in a quadrillion.

5:48 This unfathomable pairing had to happen for you and both your parents.

5:52 It had to happen for both their parents, for their parents' parents, [music]

5:55 for their parents' parents' parents, so on and so forth,

5:59 all the way back to the first humans,

6:00 [music] to the early species that evolved into humans,

6:03 to the first living creatures on Earth.

6:06 Tiny microbes at the bottom of the ocean that divided,

6:09 [music] replicated, and eventually gave rise to complex eukaryotic life.

6:14 Your existence [music] fundamentally depended on the emergence

6:16 of these microbes and a subsequent billion-year-long chain of propagation.

6:21 Your ancestors are not merely distant in time, [music] but in form.

6:26 What are the odds these microbes have even came to exist in the first place?

6:30 You being alive is not only contingent

6:32 on the incalculable odds of all the humans and creatures

6:35 that needed to exist and encounter each other

6:37 at just the right time and just the right place,

6:39 but also the odds of there being a time and place

6:42 for which creatures and humans might exist and evolve at all.

6:46 "Not how the world is is the mystical,

6:48 but that it is." wrote philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

6:53 As far as we know, the only life in the cosmos exists here on Earth.

6:58 Even if there are many other planets with life on them,

7:00 life beginning, surviving, and evolving depend on very specific conditions.

7:05 A planet must find itself in a habitable zone of the universe,

7:08 a location with just the right proximity [music] to a star

7:10 where the planet's surface temperature allows for liquid water.

7:13 It can't be too cold, can't be too hot.

7:16 There also seems to be a need for the presence of elements like hydrogen,

7:19 oxygen, and carbon, as well as enough gravity to sustain [music] an atmosphere.

7:24 Far more absurd than that, any possible planetary conditions at all

7:27 depend on incredibly specific laws and constants in the universe.

7:30 [music] For any planet to form,

7:33 there must be certain potential arrangements of matter and energy,

7:36 all held together by a force of gravity [music] with just the right tension.

7:39 The dimensions of space-time must allow for such gravitational

7:42 force in the orbiting of gas and dust to coalesce.

7:45 The very existence of matter and energy must be present, prevalent,

7:48 and stable enough to spread out and form into stellar objects.

7:51 If anything were different, even by a slight degree,

7:54 like the strength of gravity or the dimensions

7:56 of space-time or the nature of energy, it isn't clear what would materialize.

8:01 It isn't clear if stars and planets and galaxies would ever form.

8:04 [music] It isn't clear if there would be carbon.

8:07 It isn't clear if there would ever be the possibility of life.

8:11 We on Earth have just awakened to the great

8:13 oceans of space and time from which we have emerged.

8:16 We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution, said Carl Sagan.

8:22 Despite apparently being one of the most

8:24 inconceivably unlikely things in the universe,

8:26 [music] the odds of you currently existing are, of course, 100%.

8:32 Because here you are.

8:34 Even if you happen to pull the lottery ticket of death tomorrow,

8:37 to have been here even for a moment,

8:38 [music] let alone enough moments to know of moments,

8:41 to know of odds, to know of possibilities, to know of all that you can and do,

8:45 [music] is so strange and absurd, it's impossible to grasp.

8:51 It is so unbelievably unlikely [music] to die, and yet you get to.

8:56 We all get to.

8:58 If there is anything [music] worth worshipping, perhaps it is the odds.

9:06 [music]

9:12 While the odds remain in our favor, we obviously want to use our time wisely,

9:16 pursuing our interests, engaging with the world in meaningful ways,

9:19 and enjoying ourselves along the way.

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