2026-10-23 22:58 UTC
Replies (10)
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@saltesc@lemmy.world 2026-10-24 03:24
I’m actually surprised at the reactions. This is a very, “Yeah…” thing. Maybe it’s people’s concept of time is centred around the ego. Like, they don’t realise how short 80 years is. That’s only 80 orbits 🤣 Wait until you find out the dinosaurs were basically “yesterday” in Earth’s timeline. We’re very brief. “Life’s short” isn’t just some quirky saying.
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@turdas@suppo.fi 2026-10-23 23:56
The average mother having their average daughter at an average of 25 is historically probably quite an overestimate. 20 would be a much safer guess, but there’s a good chance it’s lower than that too. Doesn’t change the math that much though, easily less than a thousand generations since the advent of agriculture either way.
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@RBWells@lemmy.world 2026-10-24 00:25
What impressed me more was just how MANY ancestors you would have at that 40 generations back.
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@Mordred_85@lemmy.world 2026-10-24 05:11
Anything but metrics…
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@mlg@lemmy.world 2026-10-24 06:48
Haha reminds me of that other stat how you only need to strip/peel a some graphite on a piece of tape like 20 times to reach a single atom thickness (graphene).
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@Bamboodpanda@lemmy.world 2026-10-24 06:56
The greatest difference between us and our distant ancestors isn’t intelligence. It’s the knowledge we’ve inherited. Education is humanity’s greatest achievement. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. I’m grateful to those who lifted us up, and I’ll humbly do my part to lift those who come after us.
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@Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-10-24 08:28
This is actually a great perspective to point out against anti-intellectual arguments like evolution being fake. What kind of evolution can you expect in 450 iterations? That’s nothing in the timeline of the earth. Plus 450 mothers is already more than what some religious fanatics claim is the age of the earth.
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@SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 2026-10-24 09:00
If of one person today every previous generation had a unique pair of ancestral parents then go back 80 generations that’s 2^80^ of people had to exist during that 80th generation back. That’s more than 1.2 septillion so a one with 24 zeros. So that’s impossible that’s more people than have existed in history. Meaning that inbreeding has happened in everyone’s family tree. So lots of distant cousin marriages. But unfortunately also some fucked up shit like some of your ancestor’s parents are brother and sister or father and daughter. So if you follow one of your paternal lines back the number of dads is less than the number of mothers.
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@kadotux@sopuli.xyz 2026-10-25 05:19
Hey what the fuck I wasn’t ready
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@merc@sh.itjust.works 2026-10-24 17:15
Similarly: we all come from an unbroken line of people who had children. It may be that throughout history not having kids is common. Gay people who never had children may have been common. Ugly, poor or unpleasant people who never managed to find a partner may have been common. Asexual people may have been common. Straight people who had sex but never had kids were probably not common, just because good contraception wasn’t available. Still, if you’re a person who, for whatever reason, is not going to have kids, none of your direct ancestors can understand that life.