Cuba Libra

Why don't they teach The Weak Anthropic Principle at school

Coincidence is a strange thing and whenever it happens it seems a human trait to assume that its not coincidence at all; that something "outside the system" caused it. There are reckoned to be a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and a hundred billion galaxies in our universe, yet seems an amazing coincidence that here on earth we have exactly the right conditions for life. More than that, those conditions have remained pretty much constant for 5 billion years - a third the life of the universe - just long enough for "intelligent" life to evolve. We all want an explanation of what makes us so special. The Weak Anthropic Principle doesn't require this. It simply says if it had been any other way, then we wouldn't be here to ask the question. Maybe that doesn't seem helpful but you if you look at it in the context every other event, then it starts to make sense. Take Ernest Shackleton for example. Nobody who knows the story of his 1914 expedition can deny it is amazing he should get back with all his men. Yet how often to we think about all the explorers that failed? If it had been any other way for Shackleton, we wouldn't still be talking about him. The same goes for just about every difficult thing we want to achieve. While I believe its good to persevere, and those that happen to have made it will tell you how important that is, it helps me to also think of the people that persevered and failed when they could have survived. Maybe they should teach this in school?