Have you thought about what it means for you to be reading this?
Yesterday I met with a group of dear friends from here, Guaymas, sitting around a table sharing some pizzas with beers and wine. At some point the anecdote came out about the first day I spent in Guaymas, in the summer of 1979.
After we finished talking about this, I wondered about all the things that must have happened for the eight of us to be going through this moment of coexistence. But it was a short period, since the conversations and jokes were good.
Despite having had a heavy dinner and a couple of beers, I got up in the morning with the spirit to run. My wandering was about all the things that must have happened for me to have no longer hung out with friends the day before, simply for me to be running on my 10K route on that cold January morning. I began by wondering what would have happened if on a night in mid-1977, my parents had not had some very special guests, who they recommended for me, who was finishing high school, studying Biochemical Engineering at the Monterrey Tec, which meant that in I would arrive at Guaymas in a short time. But from there I went very far...
What would have happened if the universal constant of universal gravitation had been only, I don't know, 2% lower? Or tBoltzmann constant 1% higher? Or so, very small variations, for any of the basic constants of physics? We wouldn't be here, no one knows what could have happened.
But let us leave the universal constants as they are, what would have happened if photosynthesis had not appeared on Earth about 2.8 billion years ago? Or if oxygen, a product of photosynthesis, had wiped out all living beings, let's say, 2,500 million years ago?
Well, life survived oxygen. What would have happened if “The Great Dying” had not occurred 250 million years ago? The most likely thing is that the predominant animals about 170 million years ago would not have been the great dinosaurs but the great therapsids. , mammals?
But let's let things happen in the history of the earth as they happened. With which the precise conditions were met for the development of sociable, intelligent beings, with great ability and pleasure to communicate, enough to gather together on a Thursday night, or so that you are reading me, and we can ask ourselves all this.
That is the Simple Anthropic Principle.
But let's go further, think about the large number of events that had to have occurred for me to be writing this on this day and for you, at some point, to be reading it. Think about how unlikely it is that this exchange is happening. Think, that implies that you and I are here because things happened, precisely, in such a way that this moment is happening. We are here because it couldn't be any other way.
That is the Hard Anthropic Principle.
Every moment is a miracle.
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