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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

#91

Post by zorked »

glenstein wrote: post #18
john_strinlai wrote: post #7

> You have drawn a boy, born in the Korean Peninsula in 3394 BCE > Life expectancy at birth: 28 yrs > Died before age 5: 42% > Died before age 15: 50% i knew life expectancy was obviously lower, but those stats were a bit eye opening. unfortunately, died at 3 from an accident.

I do wonder if that life expectancy is dragged significantly down by all the ways you can die early on in life, so that it's not so much that 28 years is an old age for the time as it is a function of all things that prevent you from getting to old age. And so if you went to a town square or market in that time (if it's a time that had such a thing), perhaps it might still be perfectly normal to see people in their 3…

The website represents this well. My random person was born in the Neolithic and lived to 68. Not bad.

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

#92

Post by Sharlin »

scottmcmac wrote: post #25

"You have died of Dysentery [on the Korean Peninsula in 3064 BCE at 2 months old]" I was actually a bit surprised since it also said I was exclusively breastfed which seems to be fairly protective against diarrhea. I have a feeling this didn't account for all the joint probability distributions...

Yeah, it doesn't give totally absurd combinations (like a male dying of birth complications at age 10), but the probabilities are still likely rather rough approximations (eg. sorting cause-of-death distributions to a few bins like "infant", "child", "adult", "elder").

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

#97

Post by benatkin »

mannykannot wrote: post #53
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 guess you are right, but it makes it more interesting if the picks are not almost all from the recent past. On the other hand, I would also guess that spreading the picks evenly across the time range might result in many being from times with little data to differentiate them.

It makes the premise of the entire site flawed, though. And it defeats the purpose of the convenient button provided to redraw a year. That is what should allow you to find a pick that might be more interesting, rather than messing up the randomness promised by the site and the HN title.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] »

wat10000 wrote: post #76
riazrizvi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by WA »

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.

There are more statistical issues. I drew a person from 1984, living in Germany and recalculated their life several times. In almost all cases, their mother died while they were in their thirties, often both parents. This is simply far from reality.

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

#100

Post by jorisboris »

My daughter is four.

I drew a boy who lived 11000 years ago in Mexico.

His longest travel was a half day walk carried by his family to a nearby foraging ground.

He died at 4 from a zoonotic fever. Both parents outlived him.

It’s random, it’s ai generated. Makes me appreciate life nevertheless.

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