[pvaldes]

Yep, the aura of statistics can blind us. It will most probably happen if enough numbers of people keep trying again and again for the next ten millions of years. Would be not much different as and asteroid falling on earth once an killing most animals.

[chiefalchemist]

Agreed. But just the same, given the number of cells, the number of a species, the amount of time...I think you see where this is going.

The occurance of something is also a function of the total universe of occurrences. This doesn't seem to be part of the "close to impossible" numbers being mentioned.

If life itself was the result of a roll of the cosmic dice then anything down stream sounds reasonable.

[lisper]

An asteroid wiping us out is vastly more likely than someone winning the Powerball 100 times in a row.

[pvaldes]

Is just an example of how unprobable things can still happen

Think about winning the spermatozoan race 2 millions of times in a row, as member of the most intelligent species known in the universe, one among millions of different forms of life, after surviving five consecutive massive extinctions that wipped the 90% of the life in the planet each time.

Statistically speaking, we can't be real.

[lisper]

Flip a coin 100 times. The odds of getting the exact sequence of heads and tails that you got are about 0.00000000000000000000000000001% (give or take a zero). And yet, it happened!