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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

#71

Post by bentt »

personjerry wrote: post #63
pavel_lishin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> 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.

Yes, this was exactly what I meant in OP.

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

#72

Post by retsibsi »

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 think it's just that in the past, you would need X free time, Y motivation level, and Z skill level (partly tradeable for X and Y) to create something like this, and now all of those values are smaller. So it's 'economics' in the straightforward sense, because not everyone could afford to spend X hours on something they weren't going to monetize, and also in the sense of the incentives shaping people's productive/creative activity.

(As for whether it's a good thing, I'm conflicted. It's cool to see more stuff like this, but if it crowds out the more intense passion projects, we lose something too.)

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

#73

Post by _air »

It's funny to pick a birth year from our era and think of how history will represent us:

Martha was born in the countryside near Short Pump, in 1993 CE. Her village holds about 300 people. She makes her home in a timber-framed detached house. Martha has neither brothers nor sisters. She eats mostly wheat bread and maize, pork and dairy, and potatoes and garden vegetables, with apples in season, and coffee, soft drinks and snack foods too. She knows her letters. Her height is about 171 cm (5 ft 7 in).

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

#75

Post by Supermancho »

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.

> "a random birth is far more likely to fall near the present" is correct,

If the selection is from the population at random (as the UI indicates), but it specifically says it's based on a random year (during which humans were present) first as a filter. It's much more likely to select far from the population explosion.

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

#76

Post by wat10000 »

riazrizvi wrote: post #66
wat10000 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you be a little more specific? https://www.prb.org/news/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-... puts the halfway point at over 2,000 years ago, so you'd expect less than 50% probability of getting a random year that's not BCE. "A random birth is far more likely to fall near the present" is true in relative terms; the timeline on the web site goes back 300,000 years and you're very likely to get something in the past few thousand years, which is pretty near to the present when compared to a third of a million years. The random years it gives me fit into that pretty well, so I guessed that the person I replied to might be using a narrower definition of "anywhere near modern day" than that. Hence why I asked. If I missed something, could you kindly point out what I missed, instead of whatever this is?

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

#79

Post by magneticnorth »

drhagen wrote: post #65

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".

My first random selection lived to age 68! I felt very lucky, and then that put my modern life into interesting perspective.

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

#80

Post by magneticnorth »

yummypaint wrote: post #69
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.

This is a good point, it's not as far off as it seems from a quick glance.
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