Do you see a majesty in this view and why?

[Kitsune]

I do but hard to define why

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah, I can see a majesty in this view. It is comforting to know that out of all those possibilities, it is me that exists. Yes, I may not be a scientist greater than Newton, or a poet greater than Keats, but I am also not a dictator worse than Hitler or a murderer worse than Jack the Ripper...

Yes, the odds of me existing from all the possibilities on a world that is itself apparently unlikely are infinitesimal...but I find that comforting. I've already beaten hundreds of trillions to one odds just to exist. Saying that makes every claim that "xyz beneficial event is unlikely to happen to me" sound really hollow.

[Iroscato]

Absolutely - though I am an atheist, this is the closest thing to a religion I have. It is no exaggeration to say this knowledge, and the frame of mind it creates, has gotten me through some difficult times in my life, and has made me profoundly grateful for my very existence.
As to the why...that is not so easy to explain, but I'll try nonetheless. A great part of it is how humbling it all is, all of us live for a few decades on a tiny rock in an insignificant part of a possibly infinite cosmos. I believe once you fully open your mind to that fact and become aware of it, there's no turning back - the world is forever changed.
Another part is just how fucking scary it is. I freely admit the scale of what we're mentally grappling with here - how incredibly rare life may be, how lucky we are to even exist, how staggeringly massive the comos is - scares the bejeezus out of me. My lack of belief in the supernatural obviously means I don't believe in an afterlife - you get maybe a century of life, then you cease to exist. That's terrifying, and yet...it helps me live my life to the full, in ways that a belief in the afterlife never could when I did possess one as a child.
So yeah, that's my attempt at articulating my feelings

[Starglider]

Yes, the odds of me existing from all the possibilities on a world that is itself apparently unlikely are infinitesimal...but I find that comforting. I've already beaten hundreds of trillions to one odds just to exist. Saying that makes every claim that "xyz beneficial event is unlikely to happen to me" sound really hollow.

We don't know that. For example if many worlds cosmology or indeed one of several possible kinds of physical infinity are true, then literally everything possible exists, just not within your past light or future cone. Yes Occam's Razor but that's just a heuristic (strictly, prior probability) and it's frankly unclear how it applies at the largest scales.

[Eternal_Freedom]

You raise an excellent point Chimaera. The notion that we have a few short decades to live is an extremely motivating idea. Back when I was a teenager I was essentially gliding along with the minimum of effort, because I was convinced it ultimately didn't matter what I did as long as I believed strongly enough.

Then I got my heart broken twice in six months, learned my disability would actually affect my life (something that hadn't really registered before) and lost two relatives in the same time. My faith wavered, and then I came across this speech, or at least the first part of it. The idea of being such a small cog in the universal machine was humbling and yet exhilarating. My life was my own and it's future course was entirely in my hands. I may not be able to make any great difference on the universal stage, but I can help other little cogs here on Earth.

Within a week of that mental revelation I was no longer depressed and I was motivated for the first time in my life. Good thing too, since a decision I made then directly led to me meeting my best friend/girlfriend/soulmate three months later.

Now, years later, I've managed an astonishing amount of stuff. I've earned my degree and my accounting diploma, I've made friends for a lifetime, I've discovered new skills, I've travelled to places I'd only dreamt of before. I've become a man.

And all of that because of one fragment of one speech in a book I flipped through idly while waiting for a train.

It is a majestic worldview to me precisely because of this awesome power to motivate people. I exist, out of all the millions of possibilities, I exist. And to me is given a few decades of life to enjoy. And to make a difference to others. Instead of me there might have been a great genius or artist, but instead there's me so I have to do something to be worthy of that stupendous good fortune.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yes, the odds of me existing from all the possibilities on a world that is itself apparently unlikely are infinitesimal...but I find that comforting. I've already beaten hundreds of trillions to one odds just to exist. Saying that makes every claim that "xyz beneficial event is unlikely to happen to me" sound really hollow.

We don't know that. For example if many worlds cosmology or indeed one of several possible kinds of physical infinity are true, then literally everything possible exists, just not within your past light or future cone. Yes Occam's Razor but that's just a heuristic (strictly, prior probability) and it's frankly unclear how it applies at the largest scales.

True, but ultimately it doesn't really matter to me. Yes, everything possible may exist, either in this universe or others, but if I can't see them or interact with them then why bother worrying about them.

I can play the "what might/could have been" game all day (and have done on several Scotch-fulled occasions) but ultimately, this is the life I have, despite all those odds. And I will make the most of it, because either a) those other possibilities never happened or b) they happened somewhere I cannot access or observe, so they (functionally, to me at least) do not exist. Either way they don't affect me.

[Starglider]

Yes, everything possible may exist, either in this universe or others, but if I can't see them or interact with them then why bother worrying about them.

For practical purposes, you don't need to 'worry' about them. But then, for practical purposes, you don't need to 'worry' about your 'place in the universe' at all. The vast, vast majority of existence, both contents and structure, has no direct bearing on the decisions you have to make in life.

What you are doing here is translating abstract cosmology into emotional self-help, which is ok as far as it goes, but let's face it rational consideration of what does and does not affect you is already out the window.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm not sure what you mean by that last part. I understood something about the universe and that gave me motivation and comfort to improve my life. It was that rational understanding that was the key, so I don't see why you say rational consideration is out the window.

[Scrib]

Not really. Quite frankly I'm not particularly impressed by the attempts of atheists to reason their way into some transcendent feeling. I suppose that, at the very least, Dawkin's answer is better than Tyson's, which was to essentially remind us that our bodies are recycled by nature as if that is supposed to mean something to me.

If you are so inclined- and all humans have that yearning for poetry and greater meaning-anything ,even the universe's cold clock, can seem appealing and grand.

You raise an excellent point Chimaera. The notion that we have a few short decades to live is an extremely motivating idea. Back when I was a teenager I was essentially gliding along with the minimum of effort, because I was convinced it ultimately didn't matter what I did as long as I believed strongly enough.

It's not for me. It's a bit absurd.

Well, you can talk about every day bein' a gift and uh, stoppin' ta smell the roses, but regular life's got a way pickin' away at it. Your house. The shit you own. It drags you down. Your kids. What they want. One bad idea after another. Just tryin' ta work a cell phone menu is enough to make you scream.

In theory there's freedom, but reality has it's own inconvenient pressures that don't necessarily conform to some existentialist theory.

But again, it's all just everyone picking up a different set of tinted glasses to look at the same colorless picture.

[Kitsune]

I don't expect people to get the same feelings. . . .Might be how you were raised or somethign else.

[Scrib]

Yeah, just thought I'd add some variety.