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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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But as other have noted it's almost certainly not just a random year.

I do think the cleanest and most fascinating interpretation is what the title says "One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived" which clearly is about random people and has nothing to do with the year.

But I think experientially, the preferred feeling for a user is a random deep dive into the circumstantiality of different eras and different geographies than our own, rather than a true-to-life re-rolling that would constantly turn up 20th and 21st century outcomes. So the spirit of it is probably closer to the random year idea, but it's literally not random year, but maybe randomly something else, like eras however designated.

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

#163
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…

Both of these things can be true. It's a really good idea that immediately led me to another idea to play with. But it hallucinates so its accuracy can't be trusted.

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

#164

I 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-…

Even if this wasn't vibe coded it would be impossible to fact check billions of possible lives. I think thought provoking toys like this are a great use of AI, assuming no one takes them seriously.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>exadurates this word is usually spelled exaggerate (yes, with two g's.)

> yes, with two g's

The reason there are two Gs is that the first one is assimilated from a D. The etymological structure of the word is ex-ad-gero,¹ "from-toward-carry".

This happens for everything. Compare accelerate [ad-celero] / accommodate [ad-con-modus] / impossible [in-pot-s-ibilis] / intelligent [inter-leg-ents].

(Note that a doubled consonant in Latin is pronounced differently from a single one, as is still true today in Italian. English draws no distinction, which makes the etymological spellings likely to confuse English speakers.)

¹ This was already the form of the word in Latin. It looks malformed to me; I can't explain why exaggero is a first conjugation verb (with passive participle exaggerata) rather than simply being a prefixed form of its root (ag)gero, in which case the participle would have been exaggesta. Gero and aggero are both third conjugation verbs...

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

#168
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first part likely is just an artifact of an unwritten common assumption. That is, it's probably 96% of women, who lived to adulthood, who were ever married.

Maybe, but I doubt it. The vast majority of the sources, including the two listed for this claim, are listed as "attributed", meaning "A model (Opus or Fable) claims that this is what the cited source says. In my spot checks, I've found these claims to be accurate; still, since it's just a model claiming that author x says y, there's a nonzero chance that it's a hallucination."[1] I couldn't track down the first sour…

“ Claude accurately remembered the first source when it was stolen during the training process”

I see…

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

#169

I 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-…

Even if this wasn't vibe coded it would be impossible to fact check billions of possible lives. I think thought provoking toys like this are a great use of AI, assuming no one takes them seriously.

you can't fact check real individual lives but you can draw up a probabilistic representation

that is if your probabilities are actually correct, that the anthropological or archaeological or sociological field for that specific region and demographic is robust (and there is good primary evidence for supporting the claims), and you're not some vibe-coded AI tool that spits out a convincing lie constructed on not even educated guesses, casting shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave where the people who trust slop uncritically are chained to their ignorance for perpetuity

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

#170
i love this. it really shows you someone else's perspective.

had you drawn a different lot in life things would be very different.

imo it is a good example of Rawl's veil of ignorance thought experiment.

How would you design the world if you will be randomly dropped into any position anywhere on earth.

well done.

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