Is President Jeffries in 2027 More Probable Than the Universe that Exists? [View all]
Last edited Tue Dec 23, 2025, 09:22 AM - Edit history (1)
One of the things I love to do is to muse how impossible I am, and in saying I'm impossible, I am not referring rhetorically to observable difficulties with my personality, not being metaphoric, but to my physical reality. Beyond the improbability that my parents would meet, that they would like each other, that they would fall in love, make love is the inconceivability that I would be the result of that particular act:
Human beings have 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs, and in meiosis, the formation of sex cells, just one chromosome from each pair is selected for an egg cell or sperm cell. The probability of selection for any one chromosome from any pair is, simply, 1 in 2. These events take place in 23 different probability spaces all converging on a single outcome, thus the probability of each sperm or egg cell existing is 1 in 223 = 8,388,608. If the cell is a sperm cell, even if we ignore, with justification, since all probabilities are equal, the probability that out of somewhere 50 to 400 million cells in an ejaculation, a particular sperm cell fertilizes any egg with a probability 1 in 8,388,608, we see that the probability of the particular genome resulting in a zygote, is 8,388,6082 = 7.03687 X 1013 where the significand is rounded to just 5 digits.
The happy outcome in which I met and fell in love with my wife, and she, ultimately with me, had its own improbability of which I am certainly aware, but even if we ignore that improbability (and believe me, it seemed improbable) the probability of each of us existing was one in 8,388,608 9 Ito the 4th power, 7.03687 X 1013 squared, or 4.95176 X 1027, the thus the probability of our first son, given our own improbable outcome of existing to become lovers, at least one in 3.48449 X 1041, and afterwards, the probability of my second son (the proposal for his existence at all requiring my wife to overcome my resistance to the idea of having a second child) multiplied by the low probability of the existing three of us, brings us up to one in 2.45199 X 1055, with again, where all the significands are rounded to just 5 digits.
That's just us.
On Christmas Day (when I'll be hanging out with Christian in laws who will not know I'm an atheist) the four of us will be sitting together, unaware of how improbable that our being always was, drinking spiked eggnog and chatting amiably in front of the gas fire place in a room filled with molecules, each of which, according to the laws of statistical mechanics first formulated by the statistically improbable Ludwig Boltzmann, will have a completely improbable set of velocity vectors.
The improbability of that situation almost boggles the imagination, since just 23 liters of air contains about 6 X 1023 molecules according to the ideal gas law. We could estimate that with more labor, and I'm going to guess that the probability would be less than 1 in the number of atoms in the Universe.
And that's what stimulated this rumination on my part, coming across, in my computer driven wanderings about the universe of literature, this paper:
Restrepo, G. Spaces of mathematical chemistry. Theory Biosci. 143, 237–251 (2024), which is free access and free to read.
It references this paper: Melvin M. Vopson; Estimation of the information contained in the visible matter of the universe. AIP Advances 1 October 2021; 11 (10): 105317
Restrepo (at the Max Planck Institute) suggests that Vopson's paper (and other earlier papers) imply that there are 7 X 1076 atoms in the universe, obviously a crude estimate, but a worthy estimate all the same. Each of those atoms is in a single instantaneous space wherein each has its own velocity vector, if in a molecule, it's own vibrational mode, its own electrical density.
All this was incredibly improbable, so improbable that one wonders how something like this can happen, but it did.
Now let's turn to more mundane realities.
It is vastly more probable than the universe that exists that the orange pedophile will die in office or be somehow deposed.
It is even vastly more probable than the universe that exists that the improbable United States on an improbable planet filled with improbable people will have a House of Representatives in 2027 that is overwhelmingly Democratic, that Congressman Jeffries will be the next Speaker of the House.
It is even vastly more probable than the universe that exists that the Senate will be filled with more Democrats than and include Republicans who have - as improbable as it seems - discovered enough decency (or be driven by enough fear of their irrelevance) in themselves to be disgusted not just by the orange pedophile but his disgusting Vice President become President, that stupid confused boy Vance - driven by the disaster that is vastly more probable than the universe that their terrible reign engendered, and the disgusting Vice President become President will be impeached before a locked Senate approves a new Vice President.
It is even vastly more probable than the universe that exists therefore that the Speaker of the House, as specified in a revived Constitution, will be President.
Improbable you say?
Nah, small potatoes compared to the existence of this moment in this improbable Universe.
Why all this wild speculation from me?
I'm an old fat fading atheist who wants to give a Christmas present (or Saturnian festival Present or Druid Solstice Present) to all of you, in appreciation of you all, being here, as you are, such as it is.
Accept it if you will, and never lose your dreams of a better world, as trivial as it may be in this improbable universe which nonetheless exists.
Persist.
Happy holidays.
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