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

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

#101

Post by eole666 » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

petilon wrote: post #90

bentt wrote: post #14

We might recognize that the economics of making such a fascinating and artful experiment like this have completely changed. 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 loved it and feel inspired from it. (It looks like it's getting a lot of traffic and might get hugg…

> We might recognize that the economics of making such a fascinating and artful experiment like this have completely changed. And this is not limited to software development. In just a few years, the economics of delivering healthcare, education, entertainment and legal services are going to change completely. Transportation is changing as we speak. In a decade Physical AI will completely change the economics of manu…

We are not in a scarcity world. Or it's deliberated scarcity. We have way enough means to educate, heal, feed and transport everyone. Yet most of the world work full time to produce more and more of meaningless products, and to make the economic curves go up. Also, a huge part of the population is still poor, while the rich people get richer. And on us dooms the perspective of an extreme climate crisis.

I don't know how you can think that AI or "Physical AI" will solve any of that without a really huge shift in our locals and worldwide politics. It will probably cause a massive economical crisis before anything else of importance.

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

#102

Post by WA » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

petilon wrote: post #90

bentt wrote: post #14

We might recognize that the economics of making such a fascinating and artful experiment like this have completely changed. 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 loved it and feel inspired from it. (It looks like it's getting a lot of traffic and might get hugg…

> We might recognize that the economics of making such a fascinating and artful experiment like this have completely changed. And this is not limited to software development. In just a few years, the economics of delivering healthcare, education, entertainment and legal services are going to change completely. Transportation is changing as we speak. In a decade Physical AI will completely change the economics of manu…

In 10 years? I predict that healthcare, education, legal services and transporation won't change in a meaningful way at all. People will go to a doctor, kids will attend school and aim to graduate, legal services will still be done by lawyers and decided in court. Transportation will still depend largely on what exists right now or is being built right now. There won't be self-driving cars in every city, only in a few, probably more in the US and China, fewer in Europe, probably close to zero in the rest of the world.

And how do you think will the post-scarcity affect the daily lives of most people? My prediction is that most people even in 30 years will still work for a wage, and probably still around 30-40 hours per week, because these gains of post-scarcity won't be distributed evenly. It will mostly make a few people very very rich.

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

#103

Post by lovasoa » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

In 429 CE, Devadatta was born on the Deccan Plateau, near present-day Hyderabad. His hamlet was home to about 100 people. Among six children, he was the second. Devadatta died of neonatal tetanus or sepsis within days of birth.

Hardcore

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

#104

Post by hajjajajjaa » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

nickdirienzo wrote: post #82

This is really neat. It would be interesting to talk with the character generated.

[dead]

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

#105

Post by raver1975 » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

"You have died of dysentery."

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

#106

Post by Tenoke » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

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.

Yes, this is exactly what I expected (showing the anthropic principle in action), so I am disappointed they are not sampling correctly.

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

#107

Post by throwawayk7h » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

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.

They should have scaled the probability curve by the derivative of log(time).

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

#108

Post by fxd » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

zhoBEENG wrote: post #67

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 mo…

In other words, the Flat Birth Theory.

We can call them flat birthers

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

#109

Post by tintor » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

My first draw:

"He died of dysentery in the first days of life. His body was laid in a stone cist or a great urn beneath a ring of boulders, with iron tools and black-and-red pots."

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

#110

Post by karim79 » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

fxd wrote: post #108

zhoBEENG wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

In other words, the Flat Birth Theory. We can call them flat birthers

Come on now. We all know the birth is not flat. It can be clearly seen from space.