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Comment by kpierre | Hacker News Reader

> But by no means is our solar system special in any light: it's only special in that its particular conditions produced lifeforms able to observe it.

sorry, but i don't understand what's the logic here? it's not special, but it's only very special in sustaining/producing life? isn't that more than enough to call it special? :-)

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Not in the requisite sense. Suppose that our existence depended on a purely random roll of a six-sided die coming up as 1. If the roll had come up anything else, we would not be here to reflect on it. But if it did come up as 1, that does not mean a mystical force guaranteed that it came up as 1.

Our existence (whether likely or not) does not constitute evidence that our existence was guaranteed or predetermined. Low-probability events happen sometimes, their actually having happened once does not make them high-probability.

it seems like you, and the top comment are interpreting this news story as some attack on atheism? i don't see how that's even related. is that your preemptive strike against non-atheistic interpretation?

Absolutely not. My intention was to broaden the point by introducing the mind-blowing anthropic principle and a new perspective on the conditions leading to life, nothing more.

Suppose that our existence depended on a purely random roll of a six-sided die coming up as 1 on the first hundred rolls. It won't happen.

It's special from our perspective, certainly. It's just not special in a cosmic sense: it just happened, and the universe produced something that could observe it. It could have happened anywhere, but it happened to happen on Earth. To me, that's the special part, and I find it fascinating and mind-blowing to think about.

i see your point, but i just find that 'not special in a cosmic sense' is scientifically meaningless and therefore irrelevant here

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