I’m not sure I believe this. If I did my math right (and please correct me if I’m wrong, math isn’t one of my strengths) it would be roughly 8 billion divided by 7, meaning that 1 in every 1.14 billion people look like you. A 9% chance of meeting that person would have to mean you meet 102,857,143 people in your lifetime. Depending on your line of work or perhaps where you live it’s possible but it doesn’t seem likely for the everyday person
The people who look similar to use probably also live close to you. I have no idea if the post is correct, but, especially if you live in a place where people don't move in or out often, there is a good chance you sort of resemble your neighbors. And if you live in a country where people don't move in or out often, there is a good chance most people you meet have some common traits. Obviously this will be less true for large metropolitan melting cities, but for countries with little immigrants and towns that have been existing off ruffly the same gene pool for the last several generations, you are going to find people who look similar near you, increasing the likelihood that you will meet them.
Yeah, that too. But I meant only assuming the closest relative anyone breeds with is related as like ones 4th cousin, people still resemble each other. I mean, this is literally what causes people to look like a nationality.
meatball your math might be right but the problem is you got the wrong numbers. chinese does not look african and indian doesn't look white so it's not 8 billion divided by 7. if you cut that down by race. now go even further i'm full blooded Hungarian i look nothing like irish or italian or others so it cuts the numbers down even further. lots of ways to cut the number of people you would have to meet. well unless you go weird regional like if im in africa or a black guy was in Russia the numbers would go way up.
Not really. Only if you look exactly alike.
I have cousins who are twins who look like they might be related, but definitely don't look exactly alike. They aren't identical twins, they aren't anymore genetically similar than any sisters would be.
As for outside of identical twins, it really varies.
My friend has a kid sister who looks so much like she did at the same age. I often struggle to know who is in old photographs if one one of the siblings is in it (they are five years apart and have brothers, so it is easy to tell who it must be if there is two of the kids in the photo). If they were closer in age I'm sure people would ask if they were twins. Honestly when they are old enough people might ask anyway if the pattern continues. Five years is just a pretty big gap.
Meanwhile my sister and I don't even look like sisters. She is much thinner than I am, has dark dark hair and fairer skin than I have. Her nose is narrow and just a bit crooked from when she fractured...
Well me and my sisters, despite being 10 and 7 years apart from me, look and sound exactly the same. We have dyed our hair different colours so it’s easy to know the difference now but distant relatives have had it hard.
...it as a kid. I have a slightly shorter, wider nose. Never broke it, so it's pretty straight. My skin is slightly less fair, and has red splotches from a genetic skin condition(my dad and brother and I have it, my mom and sister do not). My hair is brown, but much lighter than hers is.
What is even crazier is how much she and our brother don't look alike. My brother has light light brown hair, the same skin condition I do, his eyes are a bit wider and blue (my sisters are dark brown, mine are green). The two have them have been asked if they are dating. To which they always awkwardly tell people "No, we are siblings."
The point is, siblings sometimes look really really similar or vastly vastly different regardless of if they share a birthday.
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· 5 years ago
I guess my question was more in line of “does similarity due to direct genetic correlation count or does it have to be a stranger?”, not “is it possible for siblings to look alike.”
The chances of someone looking *exactly* like you are so low that it's almost impossible. The chances of two people sharing just 8 facial metrics is 1 in 1 trillion. Granted those are metrics that are defined by facial recognition software. The reason some people look similar to us is because of the way the human brain processes faces. For the most part it uses facial patterns, the height, width, & distances between features, not the shape of individual features. Then, if that pattern matches one in your memory or if you're consciously studying a face, it analyzes feature shape. That's why the more you look at a set of "doppelgangers" the more different they start to look. Or if you're very familiar with a face (a spouse, for example) you can more easily see the difference. Now, if you are just talking about similar faces and not exact matches, and don't have a truly unusual face, that claim *might* hold true.
my eyes are opposite shades of brown, one being rather pale and the other being rather dark. Im pretty sure my chances of there being someone else that looks similar to me are pretty close to nil because of that
I have cousins who are twins who look like they might be related, but definitely don't look exactly alike. They aren't identical twins, they aren't anymore genetically similar than any sisters would be.
As for outside of identical twins, it really varies.
My friend has a kid sister who looks so much like she did at the same age. I often struggle to know who is in old photographs if one one of the siblings is in it (they are five years apart and have brothers, so it is easy to tell who it must be if there is two of the kids in the photo). If they were closer in age I'm sure people would ask if they were twins. Honestly when they are old enough people might ask anyway if the pattern continues. Five years is just a pretty big gap.
Meanwhile my sister and I don't even look like sisters. She is much thinner than I am, has dark dark hair and fairer skin than I have. Her nose is narrow and just a bit crooked from when she fractured...
What is even crazier is how much she and our brother don't look alike. My brother has light light brown hair, the same skin condition I do, his eyes are a bit wider and blue (my sisters are dark brown, mine are green). The two have them have been asked if they are dating. To which they always awkwardly tell people "No, we are siblings."
The point is, siblings sometimes look really really similar or vastly vastly different regardless of if they share a birthday.