How to understand why you're here, instead of making something up

 

Around 1620, a genius called Rene Descartes reasoned, 'I think, therefore I am'. He may have said it in French, 'Je pense, donc Je suis'. We know it famously in Latin, 'Cogito ergo sum'. But M Descartes would not say that today. Today, he would say, 'I am, therefore I think'.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" - Sherlock Holmes, 1890

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You can actually figure out the answer to this biggest question of all, from this simple experiment at home. 

Imagine you have 50 coins. You lay them all down 'heads'. (Easy enough to imagine. You don't actually have to do it.)

Now, toss each coin, one by one, carefully, in your mind. They won't all come down heads again, will they? You know that. You don't know how you know it, and you don't know how many will come down heads again. Or tails. But you know they won't all be heads again.

Now instead of with 50, you could do that experiment with 500 or 500,000 or 5 million coins. Imagine you do. You know the answer will be the same: not all heads (or tails), but of course not the actual numbers.

Okay. Now. After many, many experiments, experiment gives you not a definite number or 'answer' but a statistical probability. It's not a definite figure and it's definitely not 'true'. A statistical probability, by definition, is never certain.

And the really extraordinary thing that you know is that you know, in spite of however many experiments you do, it's still possible all the coins could come down heads again. You simply can't deny it. Whether 50 or 50 million. You know. You know that it's not absolutely and completely out of all possibility. You understand that it's not impossible.

That's Science. It's not certain. It's not the truth. But it's not making things up.

And it shows how and why you are here. There was some probability you’d be, in the Universe.