I really can’t help but think of the simulation hypothesis. What are the chances this copy-cat technology was developed when I was alive, given that it keeps going.
We may be in a simulation, but your odds of being alive to see this (conditioned on being born as a human at some point) aren't that low. Around 7% of all humans ever born are alive today!
In order to address the chances of a human being alive to witness the creation of this tech, you'd have to factor in the humans who have yet to be born. If you're a doomer, 7% is probably still fine. If we just maintain the current population for another century, it'll be much lower.
I dont believe that percentage. Especially considering how spread the homo branch already was more than 100 000 years ago. And from which point do you start counting? Homo erectus?
It kinda doesn't matter where you start counting. Exponential curves put almost everything at the end. Adding to the left side doesn't change it much.
You could go back to Lucy and add only a few million. Compared to the billions at this specific instant, it just doesn't make a difference.
I would imagine this is probably the source, which benchmarks using the last 200,000 years. https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived...
Given that we only hit the first billion people in 1804 and the second billion in 1927 it's not all that shocking.
That argument works both ways, it might be significantly higher depending how you count.
But this is also just the non-intuitiveness of exponential growth which has only now tapering off.