Your belly button was connected to your mother, who's navel was connected to hers, all the way to the first mammal. One endless carried forward torch of life.
Oh gosh, I wrote something similar (though not that well articulated and did not spend much time) recently and asked for similar thinkers, and now someone provided me one. Thanks !!
My thoughts are a bit different, a bit tangential, but there's an overlap.
I never got to meet any of my great grandparents. But it turns out that if you find the birth certificate (or other document) of your deceased grandparent [1], that document also has the names of your great-grandparents. And if you find their birth certificate, you can know the names of your great-great grandparents. And so on. I now know the names and even the stories of my ancestors of over five generations.
I was told the reason the LDS/Mormons have a bunch of ancestry websites is so they can perform baptisms for those who have died, anyone happened to know if that is accurate?
Yes, that's accurate (though it's far from the only reason). We believe that everyone has to have certain rites performed in order to be saved and they can be performed by proxy for those who have died (my explanation here is somewhat oversimplified and technically not 100% accurate but hopefully you get the basic idea). Those who are dead have to choose to actually accept the baptism performed on their behalf on the other side, so it's not like doing a baptism for a dead person guarantees their salvation.
Just out of curiosity, assuming someone is sitting in literal Purgatory and is presented with this choice, can you imagine any conceivable reason why they would reject it? I have zero belief in any of this myself, but if I died and was proven wrong, I certainly wouldn't suffer for eternity rather than chance my proven-wrong belief...
Well for starters, we don't actually believe in an eternal hell (unlike most other Christian denominations). That's part of why I said my explanation was a bit oversimplified, because we have a different understanding of what salvation entails than most other denominations.
We also believe that people stay fundamentally the same after death as they were in life, so someone who would have rejected the truth (and baptism) in life would likely do the same after death. Again a bit oversimplified but that's the basic idea.
Yeah, I recall some of the various levels of heaven stuff. But it's more the second part that gets me. Most people who reject this belief system in life do so because there's no solid evidence to support it. But if they've died and have someone presenting the option to them to ascend to a better heaven or reject salvation, it's a very different situation. Now there is very strong evidence. If I'm the same person after death as in life, then both versions of me are going to make decisions based on evidence, so my decision would naturally change.
>Most people who reject this belief system in life do so because there's no solid evidence to support it.
I agree, and in that sense the biggest beneficiaries of baptism for the dead are those who never had a chance to accept or reject it at all in mortal life. Though for those who had a chance in life and rejected it it's still technically possible to accept it in the next life. It's complicated, just like everything.
>If I'm the same person after death as in life, then both versions of me are going to make decisions based on evidence, so my decision would naturally change.
I mean you could be right, but scripture would suggest otherwise and that having faith (or not) isn't really about physical evidence or logic.
Luke 16:27-31
27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: 28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. 29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. 30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. 31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
Yes this is accurate. We believe the gospel of Jesus Christ as he taught it has been unambiguously restored along with the authority from God to perform baptisms and other ordinances. People through out time often (but not always) didn't have access to baptism so we perform them in their place. It's up to them (the "dead") to decide if they want to accept it. But we also do genealogy to learn about our ancestors. It helps you see how connected everyone is.
“Jesus Christ taught that baptism is essential to the salvation of all who have lived on earth (see John 3:5). Many people, however, have died without being baptized. Others were baptized without proper authority. Because God is merciful, He has prepared a way for all people to receive the blessings of baptism. By performing proxy baptisms in behalf of those who have died, Church members offer these blessings to deceased ancestors. Individuals can then choose to accept or reject what has been done in their behalf.”
i don't believe in religious gestures coming from a religion i don't believe in, for that reason i neither believe in my own baptism as a newborn, nor do i care about other baptisms
This is true, and whether you believe in Mormon doctrine or not, they provide a valuable service to those who are doing family research. My father in law, whose last name was Smith, was researching an ancestor about three generation back, and went to the local LDS ancestry library and asked for help researching his ancestor "John Smith." The way he tells it, it took a little time before anyone took his request seriously...
(Yes, the LDS archives did help him some, but the real treasure trove was in the files of a previously unknown cousin living back east.)
FamilySearch.org linked above is one of the LDS sites. They've also done a whole lot of work on scanning church books, and whatever isn't yet online is generally available to look up on microfiche.
A Swedish cousin of my father managed to do extensive research of portions of our family tree, so I know a branch of my lineage back 12 generations, to about 1505. Unfortunately, none of the recent generations appear to have any interest in knowing about their background at all.
Sometimes that makes it very easy, but misspellings or too common names often makes it annoyingly hard. E.g one of my great grandfather's is an August Magnusson born on the September 9th 1842 in South West Sweden, who then moved to Norway. Seems simple. Only there were two August Magnussons born on that same day within walking distance of each other, who both moved to Norway around the same time. Many more during the same month. I eventually managed to disentangle their records, but many people have the wrong one or a light mix in their trees....
That's to say, be cautious about relying only on the names without ruling out other persons who shares it.
> Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It is also known as the six handshakes rule.[1]
I know it doesn't mean we're all 'blood brothers' but it's useful when discussing the 'small world' phenomenon.
The "has had a 1:1 conversation with" gets very broad. E.g. I've had a 1:1 conversation with a Norwegian MP who sat in parliament in periods that means he almost certainly had 1:1 conversations with current NATO general secretary Jens Stoltenberg, son of former Norwegian foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg, and who certainly had conversations with Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian PM and WHO general secretary for years.
Those paths connects me to almost every world leader from the 1980's onwards.
What you'll quickly find is that some people have 1:1 conversations with a lot of people, and relatively "unimportant" politicians in particular do so both with "regular people" and all the other parliamentary members including the "important" ones, and there are many nexuses like that where once you find a connection to one it's a massive shortcut for a surprising proportion of the world.
Yeah, that's what I meant by "nexuses like that" but see now I left unstated "everywhere"/"in every area". Politics is an obvious one, since we see them campaigning and talking to lots of people, but trade shows, professional associations, parties, jobs, incidental effects of jobs (talking to reporters who talk to "everyone") all tend to connect a lot of people to a smaller set of far better connected people.
Even if pedigree collapse becomes endogamy, repeatedly occuring over many generation, the introduction of only one migrant per generation is sufficient gene flow to counteract the diversifying effects of genetic drift in a metapopulation.
It is one of the reasons why 90% of human genetic diversity is within groups and only 10% is between groups.
This being Finnish, one of the most isolated groups in Europe, what differs between me and someone also from Finnish descent is a similar quantity as what differs from say an indigenous Australian.
Humans are freakishly homogeneous compared to most species, with chimpanzees living on different sides of a river having more genetic diversity that the entirety of the human population.
Obviously historical low numbers of individuals at some point accounts for a lot of that, but cross deme gene flow even in fairly low rates is part why it is still true.
Here is a fairly accessible explanation of the above.
While I don't know if you are familiar with this, many people have the infinite population models in their head and the more realistic finite case can be counterintuitive.
> It is one of the reasons why 90% of human genetic diversity is within groups and only 10% is between groups.
Can you clarify what this means? I’ve heard it a bunch and I can imagine scenarios that this statement could describe. But also, a naive interpretation doesn’t make any sense.
I've thought about this and read a bit about it, and I've noticed one thing that's never taken into account: intergenerational romance.
Suppose I marry someone 17 years my junior, who's dad is 90 and her mom is 30 years his junior, and suppose I already had a son with a different woman who's mother had her young and her mother also had her young. I could have a kid who's grandfather is the same age as his sibling's great grandfather. I would guess these sorts of complications magnify over time, and they need not even be that complex. When you only consider your ancestors from nth generation to be from the same generation of people you get a good, clean linear look at the geometric growth of ancestors going back, but when you include disparate ages into the mix you get a much messier picture which counterintuitively decreases the validity of the idea that we are all descended from everyone in the world at around the year 1200. You start to see how ethnicities form and merge and continue for a long time or not, you get a sense that it is cultural norms that are either conducive or destructive to their continuation, you can see how our habits and cultural norms breed us.
I got really into the genealogy thing when I got long covid and had nothing better to do. I kept branching outward and down all the cousins, etc... hoping that sooner or later I would find out that one of my friends was a 5th cousin or something.... but the newer records tend to be private, so that didn't happen.
> In 100 years, my great-great-grandson might be able to easily pull up all kinds of info/photos/videos and learn whatever he wants to, which I’m sure will be nothing because the last thing he’ll be thinking about is what his great-great-grandfather was like.
The truth. How often do you think of your great-great grandparents? I have a photo of them hanging on my wall. I see their image everyday, but I know it’s only 2 of the 16 I had. I know nothing of the other 14.
Maybe if one of them had a popular Blog, or were a famous youtuber, or invented a fun tiktok dance, you would remember them and be a proud great great grandchild.
60 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] threadEveryone on Earth is your cousin (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29532404 - Dec 2021 (80 comments)
Eg https://www.evogeneao.com/en/explore/tree-of-life-explorer#h...
The last herring I ate was roughly a 120 millionth cousin, 61 million times removed.
https://xkcd.com/2608/ (Really, every gathering is a family reunion.)
My thoughts are a bit different, a bit tangential, but there's an overlap.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38061439
Thanks again !
[1] https://www.familysearch.org/
We also believe that people stay fundamentally the same after death as they were in life, so someone who would have rejected the truth (and baptism) in life would likely do the same after death. Again a bit oversimplified but that's the basic idea.
I agree, and in that sense the biggest beneficiaries of baptism for the dead are those who never had a chance to accept or reject it at all in mortal life. Though for those who had a chance in life and rejected it it's still technically possible to accept it in the next life. It's complicated, just like everything.
>If I'm the same person after death as in life, then both versions of me are going to make decisions based on evidence, so my decision would naturally change.
I mean you could be right, but scripture would suggest otherwise and that having faith (or not) isn't really about physical evidence or logic.
Luke 16:27-31
27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: 28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. 29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. 30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. 31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi...
(Yes, the LDS archives did help him some, but the real treasure trove was in the files of a previously unknown cousin living back east.)
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarle
That's to say, be cautious about relying only on the names without ruling out other persons who shares it.
> Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It is also known as the six handshakes rule.[1]
I know it doesn't mean we're all 'blood brothers' but it's useful when discussing the 'small world' phenomenon.
I suppose since friendship is difficult to define, it can probably be restated to "has had a 1:1 conversation with" or something similar.
Those paths connects me to almost every world leader from the 1980's onwards.
What you'll quickly find is that some people have 1:1 conversations with a lot of people, and relatively "unimportant" politicians in particular do so both with "regular people" and all the other parliamentary members including the "important" ones, and there are many nexuses like that where once you find a connection to one it's a massive shortcut for a surprising proportion of the world.
As a relatively small YouTuber (50K subs), I have never really spoken to giant YouTubers with millions of subscribers.
But I have spoken to many medium sized YouTubers (100K-1M subs), who are speaking to those giant YouTubers as well as to me.
I don't know MrBeast, but I know a guy who has personally worked with him on videos.
One person can speak to a lot of imporant people throughout their career. You just have to meet them.
Isn't this the point of this "six degrees" thing?
Minor quibble but this assumption fails to take in account pedigree collapse.
It is one of the reasons why 90% of human genetic diversity is within groups and only 10% is between groups.
This being Finnish, one of the most isolated groups in Europe, what differs between me and someone also from Finnish descent is a similar quantity as what differs from say an indigenous Australian.
Humans are freakishly homogeneous compared to most species, with chimpanzees living on different sides of a river having more genetic diversity that the entirety of the human population.
Obviously historical low numbers of individuals at some point accounts for a lot of that, but cross deme gene flow even in fairly low rates is part why it is still true.
Here is a fairly accessible explanation of the above.
While I don't know if you are familiar with this, many people have the infinite population models in their head and the more realistic finite case can be counterintuitive.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/natural-se...
Can you clarify what this means? I’ve heard it a bunch and I can imagine scenarios that this statement could describe. But also, a naive interpretation doesn’t make any sense.
That sounds completely wrong to me. Aren't most genes the same across all human beings?
Suppose I marry someone 17 years my junior, who's dad is 90 and her mom is 30 years his junior, and suppose I already had a son with a different woman who's mother had her young and her mother also had her young. I could have a kid who's grandfather is the same age as his sibling's great grandfather. I would guess these sorts of complications magnify over time, and they need not even be that complex. When you only consider your ancestors from nth generation to be from the same generation of people you get a good, clean linear look at the geometric growth of ancestors going back, but when you include disparate ages into the mix you get a much messier picture which counterintuitively decreases the validity of the idea that we are all descended from everyone in the world at around the year 1200. You start to see how ethnicities form and merge and continue for a long time or not, you get a sense that it is cultural norms that are either conducive or destructive to their continuation, you can see how our habits and cultural norms breed us.
The truth. How often do you think of your great-great grandparents? I have a photo of them hanging on my wall. I see their image everyday, but I know it’s only 2 of the 16 I had. I know nothing of the other 14.