[_y5hn]

You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies and billions of years of timespan. That you are sitting here reading these typed words is nothing short of incredible, in a world that many want to model as a Newtonian marble-universe devoid of life and consciousness.

People denounce past lives and future lives, but have no qualms about hanging on to their current life, as if that is worth anything more in the grander scheme of things. That's not to say it's a solution to end it all, but just pointing out the lack of logical thinking and grander perspective, that leads many thinking minds astray.

Or think of it like a hacker: You're cast out as the solitary sentient entity within a huge cosmos with many possibilities and experiences. What do you want to do today?

In many spiritual circles, luck has nothing to do with it, but inevitability does. Mathematics, if advanced enough, could maybe come to the same conclusion. But it's a matter of perspective. What perspective do we inhabit today?

One where everything can be explained (away)?

Or one where we cannot even explain what existence and sentience is, or why everything seems to become empty but still infinitely complex, when we zoom into them?

[persnickety]

> You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies and billions of years of timespan. That you are sitting here reading these typed words is nothing short of incredible,

There's nothing incredible about being the only kind of human known to humans. Classic anthropic principle, making every kind of human special as long as they haven't met any other kind.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

> You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies and billions of years of timespan

Sure, but there are also 10^18 insects, and untold other critters too. Given the size of the universe there are likely also billions of other planets with life out there.

It doesn't make sense to call existing and being alive lucky, since that's not a statistical outcome - 100% of humans/etc are alive. I suppose you could call temporarily being part of a living organism a "lucky" outcome for a carbon molecule, since for "them" it's not a guaranteed thing.

As a human, things to consider yourself lucky for, rather than existing at all, as we all do, are things like where you were born, and who your parents are. Were you born into poverty, or some weird religious cult, or lucky to be born into some more fortunate circumstance?

[mrangle]

Most pop science writers and readers don't understand the depth of factors involved in creating a habitable planet here. If they did, a simple chat with a better LLM would reveal that the possibility for life is far more rare than in the Universe than is commonly calculated estimating, say, only for "goldilocks zone" planets. Even plugging in one additional obvious factor other than distance to the star, such as planetary tilt, puts the estimation for the nearest possible planet at 2.5 million light years away (when starting with a reasonable estimation for the number of stars in the universe, which you will also need to pare down filtering for star type). And the factors involved go far beyond, including those involving other characteristics of the Star both in isolation and in relationship to those of the planet, and possibly additional solar system bodies like moons and perhaps more.

Then compare in ratio to the number of planets that don't hold life, and in general the vast absence of life in the Universe. Which is far more impressive in its commonness than the existence of Life.

Not feeling "Lucky" to be here is arguably a spiritual crime and, whether or not one is amenable to that type of guilt, perhaps also one of intellect. Sincerely, this is fully a generalized comment and I'm not trying to insult you.

[mbivert]

> In many spiritual circles, luck has nothing to do with it, but inevitability does.

What do you mean exactly? Say, the notion of karma in Eastern religions is a way to explain at least some amount of what is commonly dubbed "luck".

But from the perspective of someone ignorant of karmic ties, can't it only be considered luck/random? Furthermore, isn't more genuine luck/randomness (free-will?) causing such initial ties?

[_y5hn]

It depends on perspective. If you look into karma, it only holds for the perspective of sequences of lifetimes, or a couple of lifetimes being interwoven by karmic ties. What karma is is also very mystical, but not unthinkable physically speaking. Ie. gene expressions can flip during a lifetime, thus our genes hold memories lasting for at least a couple of generations. So ancestral karma is also a concept, but hard to research of course.

From a holistic and wider perspective of wholeness, everything may be said to be predestined. From a spiritual perspective, it's about how everything is set up in order to have certain experiences and maybe "lessons". Mathematically, if you have all the variables, everything that may happen can be solved by calculation, however that is done on the cosmic scales.

If the idiot is guided by a higher mind, then there's no room for "luck" on the grandest scales, but it will look like luck to the person, as a unique and individual experience.