Died at 2 of dysentery. What is this, the Oregon trail?
Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
141–150 of 309 posts
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#142"You have drawn a boy, born in the Paris Basin in 1970 CE."
Of all human history, it had to pick something off by 20 years and 200km.
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#143Shameless plug, but related, is the Watsi platform[1] I discovered a few months ago through another HN user. You can read the story of less fortunate but alive people and how much need there is in the world for one another. The founder's talk[2], Chase Adam, which made me a supporter, is a must-see. I guess it's time to rewatch it..
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#144This 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 think it's working as intended. The year is simply a randomly chosen year not related to the density of births in that year. It would be a boring tool if it actually chose "random year based on random birth" because almost every choice would be from 1900 onward...
Notice the log scale on the year axis. There is far more probability mass during older years because of that.
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#145I drew a woman born in 715 CE in the Yangtze Basin. It claims that 96% of women were married, the average age of marriage was 18, and 44% of women died before age 15. Clearly these facts can't all be true simultaneously.
The firt citation for marriage data is listed as "Hajnal (RH31)", but links to a seemingly unrelated WorldCat search. The second citation is to "Kaplan (RH03)", which I was able to track down on sci-hub. It is a broad theory of human evolution that doesn't appear to mention the Yangtze Basin or China.
Another citation is to "[RH109] Model-supplied gap-fill (Claude Fable 5 and Claude Opus 5, 2026-08-05). Bounds and items written to close gaps no dataset we hold covers. Not a published work: see each row's `basis` for its stated reason. (2026)" -- this is an interesting way to describe having an LLM hallucinate something for you.
Please stop making vibe-coded websites -- it is not useful to provide incorrect facts. You are polluting the commons with garbage.
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#146This 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 think it's working as intended. The year is simply a randomly chosen year not related to the density of births in that year. It would be a boring tool if it actually chose "random year based on random birth" because almost every choice would be from 1900 onward...
That’s not what it says on the tin though. “Drawn at random from everyone who has ever lived” means years will not be uniformly distributed.
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#147"At 79, she died of a respiratory infection. She left 18 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren behind."
What are the odds of 79. Must've been in the very top percentile
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's working as intended. The year is simply a randomly chosen year not related to the density of births in that year. It would be a boring tool if it actually chose "random year based on random birth" because almost every choice would be from 1900 onward...
That’s not what it says on the tin though. “Drawn at random from everyone who has ever lived” means years will not be uniformly distributed.
This is a case where I think they should change the wording as opposed to the functionality. I like that it's a random year regardless of population density.
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#149I drew a woman born in 715 CE in the Yangtze Basin. It claims that 96% of women were married, the average age of marriage was 18, and 44% of women died before age 15. Clearly these facts can't all be true simultaneously. The firt citation for marriage data is listed as "Hajnal (RH31)", but links to a seemingly unrelated WorldCat search. The second citation is to "Kaplan (RH03)", which I was able to track down on sci-…
This is the true reason for watermarking by LLMs. So they don't get mad LLM disease by digesting their own product.
Re: Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
#150I drew "girl, born in the Balkans in 3208 BCE", which I find super remarkable since this fits the place and time for a relatively small population of people who spoke Proto-Indo-European as their native language.