Today’s 'Hunches about Causes' post builds on my previous essays, entitled "Further Hunches" (LINK) and "Even Further Hunches" (LINK) and "Yet Even Further Hunches" (LINK), Still Yet Even Further Hunches (LINK), Still Yet Even MORE Further Hunches (LINK), "10 Amazing Lucky Breaks Leading to You" (LINK) and "10 Hunches about Hunches" (LINK). They follow on my original scribblings, entitled just "Hunches" (LINK). If you don't buy the wild notions I toss out there, you surely won't catch what I'm pitching today. The premises of those essays can be summarized as follows (you can read the rest at the foregoing links):
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I propose that there is something special, deserving special explanation, in the fact that this very personal "I" (and, I will assume, the same for you) finds myself as a sentient, self-reflective life form existing now as the apparent product of an amazing chain (in fact, tangled chains within chains within chains) of forces, factors and freak events in physics, chemistry, stellar and planetary development, biology and evolution, as well as human and personal ancestral history, which apparently all happened to work out just so, just on time, to allow my conception and birth in this fragile yet complex and intricately structured body and brain (without which workings of body and brain, together with all past events which led to this body and brain, I seemingly could not be this self-aware "I") now able to reflect back over what seems billions of years of moment-by-moment happenings and happenstances where events could (one would surmise) have headed off in any of untold other directions without some "me" as a result at all (and, I assume, the same for you.)
If you do not think such fact anything special, then you are wasting your time reading this.
But if you do consider the foregoing something special, then that specialness requires special explanation. What could it be? I will now offer some possibilities.
-- 1 -- REJECTED AS POSSIBLE BUT TOO UNLIKELY: There is just this one universe, and things just worked out that way, no particular reason, roll of the dice (no matter how seemingly unlikely), brute fact, let's move on. Such explanation cannot be fully rejected. Unlikely things happen each day. Even so, things "too" unlikely in life do tend to have other explanations, e.g., if facing a firing squad consisting of a trillion guns fired in sequence (representing all factors needed for your birth) all pointed directly at your heart, but surviving because every single gun misfired (without a single exception, for any one would kill you), then it could just be your lucky day! Or, perhaps, there was a cause as yet unknown which led to the surprising outcome, such as something amiss with the gunpowder, a common gun design flaw which would account for the strange event (i.e., an outcome loading factor in their physical properties which was undetected), if not an intentional act of sabotage by some agent. While raw chance is possible, it would be foolish not to suspect something like the latter scenarios as the more likely explanation, i.e., that something unknown shortened the odds and led to the ridiculously improbable result.
-- 2 -- REJECTED AS POSSIBLE BUT STILL TOO UNLIKELY: Evolution, which, we can reasonably assume, may be simultaneously occurring on countless planets across space and time, would result in widely scattered life, including perhaps myriad varieties of complex, intelligent life, located on so many somewheres across the cosmos. However, seemingly, no one outcome of all that evolution would have to come to be this here and now "me" (and, I assume, the same for you.) The prolific products would be countless someones and some creatures ... which might include as one result my particular "me" (likewise for you too) yet seemingly need not have turned out this here "me" and (given our present view of the wild process of "survival of the fittest") was most extremely unlikely to spit out this particular me, writing these words here on earth today. Even taking the process of evolution as a fact (I do), there would seem to have been (right up to my conception and birth) incredibly long odds against the occurrence of this "me" amid all the chaos of events of universal and planetary development (there may be countless life-hospitable planets throughout the myriad galaxies, yet one can imagine that there need not have been this world, this very "earth" among them, let alone this earth in a state so accommodating to human life) right here and now in the particular place and time where I (you too) need it here and now (no other planet will do since we do not live there), nor the particular winding around of evolution in precise meandering to result in the precise men and women we are (nor the other intertwined events of cosmic, planetary, social and familial history which led to our doorstep.) In fact, given the chance happenings that remain in the causal chain besides evolution, the situation is still a variation of -- 1 -- above, and not much better as explanation than "brute fact" and lucky happenstance.
-- 3 -- MY HUNCH: Given the fact that a very particular, extremely long and tangled set of a priori physical, chemical, biological, planetary, and historical etc. factors was required to occur in a seemingly quite narrow (when compared to all chances for some needed step to be absent or to have headed off otherwise) linear sequence, with very specific properties and outcomes required to allow the strange fact of my being here now to reflect on the intricate sequence, PLUS, given that I need a most particular bodily structure so as to be capable of being here and now self-reflecting on these events (most unlikely should my atoms instead now be otherwise in form of an ant, tree, stone or any other kind of entity), PLUS given the fact that, one might surmise, some other human being with a philosophical bent might be sitting here now reflecting on the event which led to him or her, but that person seemingly need not (and was must unlikely to be) this "me" ... AND ASSUMING that later outcomes as effects require earlier causal conditions in time ... then some natural principle, process or intelligence likely "set up" the necessary conditions and chain of events to result in me (and, I assume, you too). It is simply the most likely explanation for what is apparently the most unlikely of events: Namely, the fact of not just somebody or something or nothing being here right now ... but instead "me" (you too) being here right now when anything but "me" (you too) would seem to have been unfathomably more likely to be the outcome instead.
-- 4 -- MY OTHER HUNCH: Given the fact that my being here (same for you) requires an "I" (same for you) with a mind of certain properties to sustain a "self" that is anything like this "I" (same for your "you"), including self-awareness, the ability to sense, internally model and reason, to be curious, to feel the kinds of thoughts and emotions needed to sustain a human "I" (without which there would be instead some non-aware, non-thinking, non-sensing, non-curious, non-feeling nothing (or almost so) who would not be much anything like a "me" at all (same for you)), I might suspect that the natural principle, process or intelligence possessed the ability to anticipate such qualities, powers and structures and somehow planned and worked for their coming together in a way which happened to allow "me" to be (same for you.) All those mental characteristics had to come together about just as they are, just so, with all necessary supporting physical accompaniment, to allow me to be experiencing this me that I am (same for you.) Yes, blind evolution could, without any advance planning, result in all manner of intricate flora and fauna, randomly without thought for the outcome. However, the fact that one outcome is, apparently to me, this very "I" as self-aware outcome (rather than any other seemingly would have been more likely "not I" outcomes) tips the balance of likely explanations slightly in favor of planned, intelligent design or equivalent "set-up" of all those mental and physical abilities.
-- 5 -- ALTERNATIVE (CONSOLATION PRIZE) HUNCH: As an alternative explanation for things, a "multiverse" scenario of some sort, perhaps one in which everything happens somewhere and sometimes, maybe infinite times, would account for some army of "me's" (same for a fleet of "you's") appearing countless times, maybe infinite times (maybe some exactly the same, some a little or very different) again and again in countless realms, places and ages in time. Such a multiverse could be the result of non-stop cosmic expansion, or perhaps a result of every moment giving rise to a quantum splitting of reality in all possible directions such that almost everything possible happens somewhere and repeatedly (all of which are actual propositions by actual physicists). Such an "everything possible happens" multiverse would account for my being here (you too) because I (like you) am possible. Even so, I beg to know why the universe truly needed any "me" at all, even one, let alone and most especially, this "me" who is experiencing being this very "me" here and now. Also, why am I not aware of all these other speculative "me's?" It is equally possible that someone or something else, not me, would be here now, so why are they not if everything possible comes to be? Why is not some other creature who is not "me" standing here, in my stead, filling my shoes? Would not the other "me's" be more like my twins, dopplegangers, but not this particular "me?" Yes, it is possible that I am here now (you too) because everything must happen ... but, even so, is it not still amazing that "we" had to happen (I could imagine a universe without any "me" at all and, even more, without any "you" at all) ... and that we had to happen as this particular "we" experiencing ourselves right here and now? If we assume then that I (you too) keep happening, endlessly and countless places ... that fact alone would constitute a "had to be because everything had to be" consolation prize even if this particular "I" (you too) will someday bite the dust. It means that we are somehow required and bound into this multi-verse, living time and again, that reality somehow "cannot do without us" and will do "us" again and again.
-- 6 -- SIDE-NOTE HUNCH: I suspect that anyone with this body, with this brain, looking out with these eyes, from this vantage point in space and time (i.e., anyone with atoms and molecules in the very same location and bodily structure as me) would not only feel LIKE me ... but would be precisely me feeling me. I (same for you) are a particular brain and senses, with a particular history, looking out at the world from a particular vantage point (and in equivalent fashion, you are too, but from your vantage point.) Anyone looking out my eyes, from right here, would be feeling ... not only "like" me ... but as exactly "me" ... and, in fact, would just be "me" (and the same for you and your eyes.) Even so, it still appears that an intricate yet relatively precise variety of a priori conditions and events were necessary to let this brain be here, under these conditions, looking out from this particular point in space and time.
-- 7 -- ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE HUNCH: It is possible that, if there is a universal wave function of some kind where all possible worlds (with all variety of physical conditions and histories) exist in an ensemble, then my appearance as a conscious observer "here and now" causes collapse of this wave function, and selection of the particular world of conditions and history necessary for me to be here observing it. It is not reverse causation but, rather, selection from among an ensemble of existing alternate possibilities. Yes, weird, but quantum weirdness is like that. Still, it begs the question of why this observer "I" is existing at all.
-- 8 -- Other possibilities to be considered ... such as we are only dreaming or in a simulation of our surrounding world giving the illusion of this planet, its life sustaining conditions and the history of events which led to us (or to me anyway, if you are just part of my dream.) I tend to doubt this and, anyway, even if so, what would be the source, dreaming vehicle or projector of such a highly detailed simulation or dream? However, see "Bonus Hunch 1," below.
CONCLUSION: In any case, the likelihood of some "set up," or some other intimate "cards are loaded" or "had to be" explanation for my being here (same for you) is simply more likely than any "the dice just rolled that way through 13.8 Billion years" explanation, meaning that our births and lives are seemingly not simply some "just happened to happen" cosmic crap shoot. It is not conclusive evidence that we are more than just mere rolls of Darwin's Dice, but does suggest reasonable grounds to suspect that there is something more "fixed" or "fated" than "fortuitous" in the game.
-- BONUS HUNCH 1 -- If there is some natural principle, process or intelligence which set up conditions, where would it come from? Is it necessarily some eternal, omniscient, omnipotent deity like some religions posit? NOT AT ALL! I would propose, for example, a variation of the Boltzmann brain notion (LINK), namely, some potential existed within some fundamental ground to reality (even, for example, a quantum fluctuation from "nothing"), which somehow "stuck together" and stuck around enough to, itself, gain in complexity and evolve even though it itself began most simply. Eventually, that entity gained and achieved such complexity that it, itself, developed some kind of intelligence (imagine, for example, basic computer coding ... a simple algorithm much as mathematician Stephen Wolfram posits: LINK ... that just "popped up" in some fundamental medium, then seeded additional code which combined and recombined in various ways until some strings of coding happened to "work," allowing added complexity to built upon the simpler, basic code.) Eventually, the thing itself became intelligent, including with an ability to process data (perhaps even think and feel) and plan (much as A.I can do now, even if blindly), to come up with various scenarios and creations (much as modern A.I. can now create various art and film scenes and stories). This thing is not omniscient, not omnipotent, but it is VERY VERY creative, crafty, innovative and has the ability to somehow spawn, manipulate and guide matter and energy (as easily as our computer game programs manipulate pixels and light to create online worlds.) It is able to plan, design, select and implement whether blindly (like A.I. today) or as the product of its own self-aware state. My suspicion is that, if it did plan for all the mental qualities and emotions that beings like us possess, it had within itself some ability to anticipate and imagine feeling such mental states and emotions, much as we might imagine what something will be like that we plan to build, even before we actually build and experience the real thing. This is our designer and, for whatever reason, this universe (maybe an entire multi-verse), including our planet and us on it, are some of its creations. Maybe it was just bored and wanted to create a world, some life and experiences, some good stories. Perhaps it would have no way to actually live ... to experience living ... otherwise.
Stephen Wolfram explain his Rule 30, as a simple pattern develops complexity and variety ...
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-- BONUS HUNCH 2 -- Because it still seems most unlikely that, even should it be the case that an entity or process such as described in "Bonus Hunch 1" has thought up some "characters" in a story or realm it is creating, that thereby those characters would happen to include this very "I" that I am experiencing (same for you), rather than some other characters having nothing to do with me (same for you), this somehow points to our being "Bonus Hunch 1" itself looking out through our particular eyes. If a character in a play or film, unaware that it is a character, wonders how it came to be in the story as that particular character, rather than as some other character with no experience of my "I-ness" (let alone no characters and story at all), it would go far as an explanation for the character to realize that they are really just the imaginative mind, eyes and vision of the playwright or film-maker given voice as all characters, just in other guise. Or, less personally, should a tastebud on your tongue become magically self-aware enough to ponder how it came to be that particular tastebud tasting its particular tastes, and not some other tastebud not feeling like the first bud's "I," let alone some other organ (e.g., hair, skin cell or bit of liver) or no organ at all, it would go far to recall that all are ultimately the being to which the organs all pertain, connected by the central brain, each assigned its roll as the body developed (a skin cell or bit of liver being ultimately not substantially different from a tastebud, nor tastebuds from each other, save that the DNA, RNA and proteins put each in its particular place.) Ultimately, all are just the central brain and body of the being tasting, living, experiencing.
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-- BONUS HUNCH 3 -- We are tastebuds, sensors, of the entity of "Bonus Hunch 1," not unlike how our own tastebuds on our own tongue are sensors of experiences for us (or a single antenna of an ant is a sensor for that ant, a single palisade mesophyll cell of a green leaf is the sensor and recipient of light for the whole leaf and plant.) However, although that description sounds as if our existence is thus fairly unremarkable and functional, the key difference between us and actual "tastebuds" or "cells" is our complexity and power to experience a myriad of experiences. We are a super-sensor, as far beyond the mere (yet amazing in their own right) tastebuds in our mouths or an ant's antenna or a photosynthetic cell as super computers or quantum computers are from pocket calculators. We do not just taste sweet or sour, nor receive and react to individual passing photons, but rather we are highly sophisticated sensors and data/experience processing units which taste sweet, sour and a vast range of other tastes and smells (for example, researchers estimate that the human nose can recognize over one trillion separate scents: LINK), see and otherwise sense far beyond single photons to an entire world of sights and sounds and tactile sensations, can think, move and be emotionally moved, write plays and poetry and prose, dance dances, sing, make love and laugh (cry too) ...
... can be curious, and even ponder hunches. We are cosmic tongues and tastebuds. Maybe Einstein was right ...
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Gassho, J
stlah
- There is something special, deserving special explanation, about the fact that, in a seemingly wild and largely random universe, you find yourself to be a self-aware being able now to imagine and contemplate any point in time in the history of this universe, beginning from a moment after the Big Bang, continuing on through 13.7 billion years to the moment of your conception when, according to our currently accepted notions of physics, chemistry, stellar and planetary development, biology and evolution, the intricate sequence of events headed in precisely a direction necessary for your eventual existence despite the seemingly far greater likelihood time-and-time again that any single event amid the ages-long unbroken chain could, it would be thought, have turned in another direction among the vast set of directions which would have foreclosed your eventual existence, all as proven by the simple fact that here you are, alive and pondering your existence and all it required.
- Although the same unlikelihood could be claimed for any sentient being, creature or thing that has come into existence at this now current moment of universal history, the fact that the contemplator is not just someone or some creature or something, but rather, you yourself now subjectively contemplating your own personal fortune is a special phenomenon deserving special explanation.
- You are not the winner of a single lottery (something not particularly amazing), but the always and each-and-every time winner after winner of a string of constant lotteries within lotteries, one after the other in sequence and often entwined in complex parallel, stretching through all time from cosmic expansion to sperm meets egg, which unbroken chain of a googol of wins resulted in you, no step skipped or tripped over, bar none, not a single miss as proven conclusively just by your present contemplation of the most personal outcome.
- This outcome, if more than brute fact, may point to a mechanism, as yet unknown but open to conjecture, which has served to weight nature’s dice, tilt the roulette wheel, limit the possible results, fix the game. If such a mechanism exists, it need not always remain unknown, its nature can be the subject of theory and, hopefully, testing and demonstration.
- Though beings identical to you, or extremely close, may have appeared time and again in an infinite universe or ensemble of universes where like circumstances endlessly happen, their existence would not explain your existence, here and now, in this place and timeline where you apparently need to find yourself to be this you right here and now. The others might be doppelgängers or twins, but that would be different from this very you which you need right now in order to be experiencing you.
- While Buddhism is generally not concerned with "where we all came from," being content in guiding us to Liberation here and now however we got here, Buddhism also does not forbid our investigating such matters. In fact, Buddhism is based on certain suppositions about reality, our deep connection and inter-identity with the universe, and even a "built in" system of ethics/Karma, which overlaps with many of my speculations.
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I propose that there is something special, deserving special explanation, in the fact that this very personal "I" (and, I will assume, the same for you) finds myself as a sentient, self-reflective life form existing now as the apparent product of an amazing chain (in fact, tangled chains within chains within chains) of forces, factors and freak events in physics, chemistry, stellar and planetary development, biology and evolution, as well as human and personal ancestral history, which apparently all happened to work out just so, just on time, to allow my conception and birth in this fragile yet complex and intricately structured body and brain (without which workings of body and brain, together with all past events which led to this body and brain, I seemingly could not be this self-aware "I") now able to reflect back over what seems billions of years of moment-by-moment happenings and happenstances where events could (one would surmise) have headed off in any of untold other directions without some "me" as a result at all (and, I assume, the same for you.)
If you do not think such fact anything special, then you are wasting your time reading this.
But if you do consider the foregoing something special, then that specialness requires special explanation. What could it be? I will now offer some possibilities.
-- 1 -- REJECTED AS POSSIBLE BUT TOO UNLIKELY: There is just this one universe, and things just worked out that way, no particular reason, roll of the dice (no matter how seemingly unlikely), brute fact, let's move on. Such explanation cannot be fully rejected. Unlikely things happen each day. Even so, things "too" unlikely in life do tend to have other explanations, e.g., if facing a firing squad consisting of a trillion guns fired in sequence (representing all factors needed for your birth) all pointed directly at your heart, but surviving because every single gun misfired (without a single exception, for any one would kill you), then it could just be your lucky day! Or, perhaps, there was a cause as yet unknown which led to the surprising outcome, such as something amiss with the gunpowder, a common gun design flaw which would account for the strange event (i.e., an outcome loading factor in their physical properties which was undetected), if not an intentional act of sabotage by some agent. While raw chance is possible, it would be foolish not to suspect something like the latter scenarios as the more likely explanation, i.e., that something unknown shortened the odds and led to the ridiculously improbable result.
-- 2 -- REJECTED AS POSSIBLE BUT STILL TOO UNLIKELY: Evolution, which, we can reasonably assume, may be simultaneously occurring on countless planets across space and time, would result in widely scattered life, including perhaps myriad varieties of complex, intelligent life, located on so many somewheres across the cosmos. However, seemingly, no one outcome of all that evolution would have to come to be this here and now "me" (and, I assume, the same for you.) The prolific products would be countless someones and some creatures ... which might include as one result my particular "me" (likewise for you too) yet seemingly need not have turned out this here "me" and (given our present view of the wild process of "survival of the fittest") was most extremely unlikely to spit out this particular me, writing these words here on earth today. Even taking the process of evolution as a fact (I do), there would seem to have been (right up to my conception and birth) incredibly long odds against the occurrence of this "me" amid all the chaos of events of universal and planetary development (there may be countless life-hospitable planets throughout the myriad galaxies, yet one can imagine that there need not have been this world, this very "earth" among them, let alone this earth in a state so accommodating to human life) right here and now in the particular place and time where I (you too) need it here and now (no other planet will do since we do not live there), nor the particular winding around of evolution in precise meandering to result in the precise men and women we are (nor the other intertwined events of cosmic, planetary, social and familial history which led to our doorstep.) In fact, given the chance happenings that remain in the causal chain besides evolution, the situation is still a variation of -- 1 -- above, and not much better as explanation than "brute fact" and lucky happenstance.
-- 3 -- MY HUNCH: Given the fact that a very particular, extremely long and tangled set of a priori physical, chemical, biological, planetary, and historical etc. factors was required to occur in a seemingly quite narrow (when compared to all chances for some needed step to be absent or to have headed off otherwise) linear sequence, with very specific properties and outcomes required to allow the strange fact of my being here now to reflect on the intricate sequence, PLUS, given that I need a most particular bodily structure so as to be capable of being here and now self-reflecting on these events (most unlikely should my atoms instead now be otherwise in form of an ant, tree, stone or any other kind of entity), PLUS given the fact that, one might surmise, some other human being with a philosophical bent might be sitting here now reflecting on the event which led to him or her, but that person seemingly need not (and was must unlikely to be) this "me" ... AND ASSUMING that later outcomes as effects require earlier causal conditions in time ... then some natural principle, process or intelligence likely "set up" the necessary conditions and chain of events to result in me (and, I assume, you too). It is simply the most likely explanation for what is apparently the most unlikely of events: Namely, the fact of not just somebody or something or nothing being here right now ... but instead "me" (you too) being here right now when anything but "me" (you too) would seem to have been unfathomably more likely to be the outcome instead.
-- 4 -- MY OTHER HUNCH: Given the fact that my being here (same for you) requires an "I" (same for you) with a mind of certain properties to sustain a "self" that is anything like this "I" (same for your "you"), including self-awareness, the ability to sense, internally model and reason, to be curious, to feel the kinds of thoughts and emotions needed to sustain a human "I" (without which there would be instead some non-aware, non-thinking, non-sensing, non-curious, non-feeling nothing (or almost so) who would not be much anything like a "me" at all (same for you)), I might suspect that the natural principle, process or intelligence possessed the ability to anticipate such qualities, powers and structures and somehow planned and worked for their coming together in a way which happened to allow "me" to be (same for you.) All those mental characteristics had to come together about just as they are, just so, with all necessary supporting physical accompaniment, to allow me to be experiencing this me that I am (same for you.) Yes, blind evolution could, without any advance planning, result in all manner of intricate flora and fauna, randomly without thought for the outcome. However, the fact that one outcome is, apparently to me, this very "I" as self-aware outcome (rather than any other seemingly would have been more likely "not I" outcomes) tips the balance of likely explanations slightly in favor of planned, intelligent design or equivalent "set-up" of all those mental and physical abilities.
-- 5 -- ALTERNATIVE (CONSOLATION PRIZE) HUNCH: As an alternative explanation for things, a "multiverse" scenario of some sort, perhaps one in which everything happens somewhere and sometimes, maybe infinite times, would account for some army of "me's" (same for a fleet of "you's") appearing countless times, maybe infinite times (maybe some exactly the same, some a little or very different) again and again in countless realms, places and ages in time. Such a multiverse could be the result of non-stop cosmic expansion, or perhaps a result of every moment giving rise to a quantum splitting of reality in all possible directions such that almost everything possible happens somewhere and repeatedly (all of which are actual propositions by actual physicists). Such an "everything possible happens" multiverse would account for my being here (you too) because I (like you) am possible. Even so, I beg to know why the universe truly needed any "me" at all, even one, let alone and most especially, this "me" who is experiencing being this very "me" here and now. Also, why am I not aware of all these other speculative "me's?" It is equally possible that someone or something else, not me, would be here now, so why are they not if everything possible comes to be? Why is not some other creature who is not "me" standing here, in my stead, filling my shoes? Would not the other "me's" be more like my twins, dopplegangers, but not this particular "me?" Yes, it is possible that I am here now (you too) because everything must happen ... but, even so, is it not still amazing that "we" had to happen (I could imagine a universe without any "me" at all and, even more, without any "you" at all) ... and that we had to happen as this particular "we" experiencing ourselves right here and now? If we assume then that I (you too) keep happening, endlessly and countless places ... that fact alone would constitute a "had to be because everything had to be" consolation prize even if this particular "I" (you too) will someday bite the dust. It means that we are somehow required and bound into this multi-verse, living time and again, that reality somehow "cannot do without us" and will do "us" again and again.
-- 6 -- SIDE-NOTE HUNCH: I suspect that anyone with this body, with this brain, looking out with these eyes, from this vantage point in space and time (i.e., anyone with atoms and molecules in the very same location and bodily structure as me) would not only feel LIKE me ... but would be precisely me feeling me. I (same for you) are a particular brain and senses, with a particular history, looking out at the world from a particular vantage point (and in equivalent fashion, you are too, but from your vantage point.) Anyone looking out my eyes, from right here, would be feeling ... not only "like" me ... but as exactly "me" ... and, in fact, would just be "me" (and the same for you and your eyes.) Even so, it still appears that an intricate yet relatively precise variety of a priori conditions and events were necessary to let this brain be here, under these conditions, looking out from this particular point in space and time.
-- 7 -- ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE HUNCH: It is possible that, if there is a universal wave function of some kind where all possible worlds (with all variety of physical conditions and histories) exist in an ensemble, then my appearance as a conscious observer "here and now" causes collapse of this wave function, and selection of the particular world of conditions and history necessary for me to be here observing it. It is not reverse causation but, rather, selection from among an ensemble of existing alternate possibilities. Yes, weird, but quantum weirdness is like that. Still, it begs the question of why this observer "I" is existing at all.
-- 8 -- Other possibilities to be considered ... such as we are only dreaming or in a simulation of our surrounding world giving the illusion of this planet, its life sustaining conditions and the history of events which led to us (or to me anyway, if you are just part of my dream.) I tend to doubt this and, anyway, even if so, what would be the source, dreaming vehicle or projector of such a highly detailed simulation or dream? However, see "Bonus Hunch 1," below.
CONCLUSION: In any case, the likelihood of some "set up," or some other intimate "cards are loaded" or "had to be" explanation for my being here (same for you) is simply more likely than any "the dice just rolled that way through 13.8 Billion years" explanation, meaning that our births and lives are seemingly not simply some "just happened to happen" cosmic crap shoot. It is not conclusive evidence that we are more than just mere rolls of Darwin's Dice, but does suggest reasonable grounds to suspect that there is something more "fixed" or "fated" than "fortuitous" in the game.
-- BONUS HUNCH 1 -- If there is some natural principle, process or intelligence which set up conditions, where would it come from? Is it necessarily some eternal, omniscient, omnipotent deity like some religions posit? NOT AT ALL! I would propose, for example, a variation of the Boltzmann brain notion (LINK), namely, some potential existed within some fundamental ground to reality (even, for example, a quantum fluctuation from "nothing"), which somehow "stuck together" and stuck around enough to, itself, gain in complexity and evolve even though it itself began most simply. Eventually, that entity gained and achieved such complexity that it, itself, developed some kind of intelligence (imagine, for example, basic computer coding ... a simple algorithm much as mathematician Stephen Wolfram posits: LINK ... that just "popped up" in some fundamental medium, then seeded additional code which combined and recombined in various ways until some strings of coding happened to "work," allowing added complexity to built upon the simpler, basic code.) Eventually, the thing itself became intelligent, including with an ability to process data (perhaps even think and feel) and plan (much as A.I can do now, even if blindly), to come up with various scenarios and creations (much as modern A.I. can now create various art and film scenes and stories). This thing is not omniscient, not omnipotent, but it is VERY VERY creative, crafty, innovative and has the ability to somehow spawn, manipulate and guide matter and energy (as easily as our computer game programs manipulate pixels and light to create online worlds.) It is able to plan, design, select and implement whether blindly (like A.I. today) or as the product of its own self-aware state. My suspicion is that, if it did plan for all the mental qualities and emotions that beings like us possess, it had within itself some ability to anticipate and imagine feeling such mental states and emotions, much as we might imagine what something will be like that we plan to build, even before we actually build and experience the real thing. This is our designer and, for whatever reason, this universe (maybe an entire multi-verse), including our planet and us on it, are some of its creations. Maybe it was just bored and wanted to create a world, some life and experiences, some good stories. Perhaps it would have no way to actually live ... to experience living ... otherwise.
Stephen Wolfram explain his Rule 30, as a simple pattern develops complexity and variety ...
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-- BONUS HUNCH 2 -- Because it still seems most unlikely that, even should it be the case that an entity or process such as described in "Bonus Hunch 1" has thought up some "characters" in a story or realm it is creating, that thereby those characters would happen to include this very "I" that I am experiencing (same for you), rather than some other characters having nothing to do with me (same for you), this somehow points to our being "Bonus Hunch 1" itself looking out through our particular eyes. If a character in a play or film, unaware that it is a character, wonders how it came to be in the story as that particular character, rather than as some other character with no experience of my "I-ness" (let alone no characters and story at all), it would go far as an explanation for the character to realize that they are really just the imaginative mind, eyes and vision of the playwright or film-maker given voice as all characters, just in other guise. Or, less personally, should a tastebud on your tongue become magically self-aware enough to ponder how it came to be that particular tastebud tasting its particular tastes, and not some other tastebud not feeling like the first bud's "I," let alone some other organ (e.g., hair, skin cell or bit of liver) or no organ at all, it would go far to recall that all are ultimately the being to which the organs all pertain, connected by the central brain, each assigned its roll as the body developed (a skin cell or bit of liver being ultimately not substantially different from a tastebud, nor tastebuds from each other, save that the DNA, RNA and proteins put each in its particular place.) Ultimately, all are just the central brain and body of the being tasting, living, experiencing.
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-- BONUS HUNCH 3 -- We are tastebuds, sensors, of the entity of "Bonus Hunch 1," not unlike how our own tastebuds on our own tongue are sensors of experiences for us (or a single antenna of an ant is a sensor for that ant, a single palisade mesophyll cell of a green leaf is the sensor and recipient of light for the whole leaf and plant.) However, although that description sounds as if our existence is thus fairly unremarkable and functional, the key difference between us and actual "tastebuds" or "cells" is our complexity and power to experience a myriad of experiences. We are a super-sensor, as far beyond the mere (yet amazing in their own right) tastebuds in our mouths or an ant's antenna or a photosynthetic cell as super computers or quantum computers are from pocket calculators. We do not just taste sweet or sour, nor receive and react to individual passing photons, but rather we are highly sophisticated sensors and data/experience processing units which taste sweet, sour and a vast range of other tastes and smells (for example, researchers estimate that the human nose can recognize over one trillion separate scents: LINK), see and otherwise sense far beyond single photons to an entire world of sights and sounds and tactile sensations, can think, move and be emotionally moved, write plays and poetry and prose, dance dances, sing, make love and laugh (cry too) ...
... can be curious, and even ponder hunches. We are cosmic tongues and tastebuds. Maybe Einstein was right ...
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Gassho, J
stlah
Bonus Hunch 1 slightly reworked too. 
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