"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Mos…
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day...
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In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
...outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.
Interesting perspective. I wonder if that's the entire story. What if we are immortal souls, and we choose the bodies to be born into? Not so random anymore then!
Perhaps Newton would have been born regardless, but under a different name? It's a mystery..