Ask HN: How to explain the luck of being a human being and not an insect?
There are far more insects than human beings, so how does one explain the amazing luck of being a human being and not an insect?
I argue with my wife about it all the time and I’d say karma is a harmful belief because it supports injustice. In India for instance, people believe that your position in the caste system is a reward or punishment for your past life behavior. To me this sounds suspiciously like ‘For a dahlit, Earth is a hell, and by upholding Hinduism you are responsible for that person’s punishment, that is, a devil.’
I'm lucky that I exist at all, but on the other hand if I didn't exist I probably wouldn't know or care.
I guess without more information on what exactly not existing looks like in practice it's hard to say, though. I imagine some religious groups have a more precise answer they'd offer in terms of what not existing means.
That being said, I’m well aware of the curious feeling of the realization that one is the particular consciousness that one is and not any other, and that it seems quite random (and lucky or unlucky, depending on your circumstances). But in the end it’s kind of an illusion, because what would be the alternative? For any being X, of course they are that being X and no other! There is no way it could be any different.
The ant lies on another branch of this stack of stacks. It's that simple: nobody chose you to be you, you're head of line in a tree of consciousness and the ant is head of line in a different tree.
It's statistics and chance.
Hofstader writes about collective consciousness and ants either in GEB or a collection of essays edited by Daniel Dennett
This may be a good starting point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
The Anthropic principle might not seem relevant to your exact question. It tries to answer the observations like, "how come the universe, such as its fundamental constants and whatnot, is so fine-tuned to bring about life; it seems incredibly improbable".
The problem is that the question is being asked by a sentient being in exactly that universe, who has no access to any other universe.
To apply it to your question, how do you know there don't exist a vast number of parallel universes in which you don't in fact exist? (Yet in which there are vast numbers of insects, nonetheless?)
Your observation is biased because you have only one sample of reality: that one in which you are.
It is logically impossible for a world to have the conditions to bring about a sentient being, and not have it look like (to that being) that it's all an amazingly lucky coincidence. A sentient being knows only one world, in which they are the only "I", and that necessarily seems improbable. It cannot be any other way.
An ant colony has an intelligence level similar to a dog; the ants act more like little robots or cells. Is a city conscious? A city has lots of parts, it grows, it becomes ill. What about a planet?
Maybe the question should be what's the luck that we're born humans and not ant colonies or states?
The conditions had to be nearly perfect for life to form. And then if you look at your millions of ancestors, many of them were in near-death situations before they reproduced. And then, most people meet each other basically out of sheer luck.
It’s not like in science-fiction movies: a tiny fluctuation in the distant past would probably mean you no longer exist. The conditions had to be perfect just for your mom to meet and then take interest in your dad, and your grandparents, and their parents, etc.
But once you exist, the odds are 1 in 1.
According to Hindu beliefs, the soul is forever and it is karma that dictates what physical form it will take in the next life.[1]
how to explain the luck of being a living being on earth and not a rock on mars?
how to explain the luck of the people winning lotteries?
Statistics?
If you do Math.floor(Math.random() * 10000000000) and you land on 0, how do you explain the luck of landing on 0?
There is nothing to explain really, sounds like the kind of ridiculous question you hear from theists