Have we all won a genetic lottery?

Question

Everyone alive today was created from some pairing of a mother and a father. Yet, there are tens of millions of potential mothers and tens of millions of potential fathers. Every single pairing of every possible mother and every possible father would create a unique person, each with their own face and personaility. Yet, almost none of these people actually exist, of course.

For example: If there were a million adults in the world, that might leave 500,000 males and an equal number of females. If each "couple" has one child, the world would produce 500,000 real children...but there are 250 billion "potential kids" among that group. This means that 99.9998% of all the possible children out there will never exist. This % goes much higher when you factor in that the world population is actually much larger than one million people.

Are we all the ultimate unlikely lottery winners, granted the gift of a life that so many are denied?

Answer 1

I suppose we may be lucky that we are born (for those of us that don't completely hate life) but I wouldn't go as far as to say that we won a genetic lottery.

A lot of people's genetics are going to force them into a life of constant pain and suffering.

Answer 2

Which goes to prove we were not blind at conception but knew exactly where to go  which means we had a choice in the matter to, though we could not tell anyone until now. We do know where we are going in life but what we are not used to is all the questions.

Answer 3

That's an interesting thought we are all definitely lucky to be alive given the probability life itself. We definitely take life for granted in a sense

Answer 4

Very interesting. I think you are right, but I think some people who believe in religion is going to say that it is God's will why they were born and not by chance.

My perspective though, there is only a 33% chance of conception occurring during each cycle for a woman and only a 24 hour time frame in which it can occur each month. There is no way we can tell which follicles are developing and which is going to mature and what genetics the eggs are carrying. Then you have the other side of the equation with the males and that really is anywhere from a 15,000 million to 100 million chance of sperm with different genes to make it to the jackpot.

I did an IVF cycle and even then it was more by chance of which eggs were extracted and which sperm was injected into the egg. Less of a chance then a normal cycle, but still a chance.

So, yes, I think we here because of a genetic lottery. A chance in time when the right environment and conditions existed that supported both side of the equation and produce a child 9 months later.

Answer 5

Very interesting thought...

I think we'd all do well to remember how lucky we are just to be here in the first place...