That's amazing!

xkcd's latest strip is about how amazing it is to be in the 21st century. Allow me to present another thinker:

Here we are, evolved from by the process of natural selection and contingency, to become creatures that hit pieces of plastic that send electronic signals to bits of wire and silicone, that creates electrons on a piece of glass (or LCD) that enables us to think we can understand the world with computers(*).

What you're looking at right now...and even right now...doesn't exist as you think it does. It's just your brain interpreting light particles impacting on nerves to create a three-dimensional image of what you perceive as the world around you.

And, as Douglas Adams said:

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

(* Or watch porn. 'Amazing' means different things to different people.)

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