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Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

anyhumanever.com

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Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#61

Post by pavel_lishin »

personjerry wrote: post #36
pavel_lishin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No ads. Not asking for anything except your attention, and then delivering an outcome that is fascinating and honestly, far beyond what a person would be incentivized to build before AI tooling. I don't think I agree. There were plenty of interesting side-projects on the internet before AI. I'm not sure why AI means that people don't need to support their creations with ads. Sure, it probably took fewer human-hours…

> There were plenty of interesting side-projects on the internet before AI. This is a strawman. The original point was "the economics ... have changed" I read this as, it's much easier to spin up a project of this scale even non-monetized, and more people are able and willing to do so.

Yes, it's easier - but I'm not sure what that has to do with ads or asking for things beyond attention.

Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#62

Post by AnnikaL »

coldtea wrote: post #51
hliyan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely, I too, died in the Korean Peninsula at 8 months old, but circa 6000 BCE.

Hmm, I was at the Korean Penisula too. How representatively random is this thing?

I died of malaria at age 1 in the West African Sahel!

Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#63

Post by personjerry »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #61
personjerry wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There were plenty of interesting side-projects on the internet before AI. This is a strawman. The original point was "the economics ... have changed" I read this as, it's much easier to spin up a project of this scale even non-monetized, and more people are able and willing to do so.

Yes, it's easier - but I'm not sure what that has to do with ads or asking for things beyond attention.

I believe that part serves to emphasize the main point.

To elucidate for this particular example, before AI agents existed, projects with this level of data and depth might've needed to be monetized in order to justify the resources to bring it to life.

Now that the barrier is much lower, the creator didn't mind spinning up and providing it with no monetization (e.g. no ads).

Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#65

Post by drhagen »

Before clicking, I said to myself "Indian peasant".

> You have drawn a girl, born in the Ganges Plain in 1628 CE.

> She was born, married at 16, lost her mother at 19, was orphaned at 30, had 8 children, and died at 39 of pneumonic plague, with 6 surviving children.

Nailed it. Though in retrospect, I drew really well. It would have been safer to guess "toddler death".

Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#66

Post by riazrizvi »

wat10000 wrote: post #58
magneticnorth wrote: post #47

This is neat, but I don't think it's actually drawing the year from the correct probability distribution - "a random birth is far more likely to fall near the present" is correct, but in 5 "random" choices, only one was from anywhere near modern day.

How near is near? With ~100 billion people having ever lived, the odds of a randomly selected life falling within the past couple of centuries are not all that high.

Okay step away from the waving hands and read the source material.

Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#67

Post by zhoBEENG »

magneticnorth wrote: post #47

This is neat, but I don't think it's actually drawing the year from the correct probability distribution - "a random birth is far more likely to fall near the present" is correct, but in 5 "random" choices, only one was from anywhere near modern day.

I did a statistical analysis and you are correct. The issue seems to be that crude birth rates from around 500CE and earlier are overestimated significantly. The bad source seems to be Kaneda & Haub, "How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?", where they assume a flat crude birth rate of 80 for all BCE dates. The probability distribution is just a function of pop and CBR, so it results in significantly decreasing modern birth probabilities.

Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#68

Post by bentt »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #29
pavel_lishin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No ads. Not asking for anything except your attention, and then delivering an outcome that is fascinating and honestly, far beyond what a person would be incentivized to build before AI tooling. I don't think I agree. There were plenty of interesting side-projects on the internet before AI. I'm not sure why AI means that people don't need to support their creations with ads. Sure, it probably took fewer human-hours…

In fact, there was a time when the internet was mostly interesting side projects, if you go back far enough (the mid 1990s, say).

It’s true. It feels like that age may be revisiting us. Makes me happy to see stuff like this which isn’t upselling something.

Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#69

Post by yummypaint »

magneticnorth wrote: post #47

This is neat, but I don't think it's actually drawing the year from the correct probability distribution - "a random birth is far more likely to fall near the present" is correct, but in 5 "random" choices, only one was from anywhere near modern day.

The x-axis being log scale by default visually exadurates the effect if you are thinking about it in terms of area under the curve. This confused me also.

Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived

#70

Post by rc5150 »

Perz1val wrote: post #57
xiaoyu2006 wrote: post #38

I am really happy to live in the modern age. It is quite amazing to think that people are facing cardiovascular disease and cancer instead of random parasites nowadays. Modern medicine is such a miracle.

How many random parasites has modern medicine removed from you? Likely you never even had one. It's not just medicine, we also have abundant, safe food, clean water and warm housing

>we also have abundant, safe food, clean water and warm housing

for now

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