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

#181

Post by Lerc » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

no_multitudes wrote: post #173

tedggh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't follow what your point is here. If you're not aware, Anthropic pirated many books via libgen and similar tools for use during the training process[1]. Maybe you are not aware of this, or do not consider it theft? [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-approves-anthropics-1...

Did the original owners of the books no longer have them in their possession afterwards?

Theft involves removing from the source, Copyright violation is distributing copies without a legal right to do so. Training is fair use.

The judge found that it constituted copyright violation. Purchasing the books would cover their responsibilities with regards to training. The claim that they are destroying books to hold copyright is incorrect. The judge cited precedent that said instances of not destroying the originals were also fair use, his claim about destruction was to say even if this precedent were not considered fair use, the destruction that was already occurring (because it is easier to scan loose pages), invalidated one of the arguments against it.

The ruling was on training took the form

If A is ok then B is ok, but even if A were not ok, B might still be ok.

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

#182

Post by ntSean » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

user1338 wrote: post #180

This is what I got: Seojun - Seojun is not a real person. But his life story is created from the statistical reality of the Korean Peninsula in 1999 CE. In 1999 CE, Seojun was born in the countryside near Pongch’ŏn-ŭp. His village is home to about 250 people. Among four children, he was the fourth. He eats largely rice, soybean paste and tofu, dried fish and shellfish, and pickled cabbage and radish, with persimmon a…

It doesn’t say his favorite food is anything? Have you misread this and decided to take offense?

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

#183

Post by Lerc » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

assumed_throwaw wrote: post #176

no_multitudes wrote: post #145

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-…

I am genuinely puzzled as to why this kind of vibe-coded site are so popular on HN. I consider the crowd here to be much smarter than I am, which is why I enjoyed the links that were shared and the discussions that followed. The website is pretty, but the statistics and stories are the main point. Yet we are being fed hallucinated false claims, and somehow, that doesn't seem to be a problem... I don't understand why…

Can you offer any evidence that it is any less accurate than a page hand crafted by a human?

I thought it provided an interesting tool for people to put things into perspective.

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

#184

Post by no_multitudes » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #179

no_multitudes wrote: post #145

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-…

There are plenty of problems with the site but that some stats like marriage do not count dead newborns as unwed instead of invalid for the stat is not really one of them.

What age of death discounts someone as counting towards the marriage percentage? If a human made the website, there would be an answer to this question. That answer might not be published and might vary between datasets, but it would exist.

In this case there is no answer, because the percentage is just made up by the LLM. There is no methodology. Your answer is inappropriately anthropomorphizing the LLM by imputing a methodology onto its "data collection" process.

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

#185

Post by mcmcmc » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:37 PM UTC

BubbleRings wrote: post #132

nonameiguess wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site was registered a month ago. If it ever actually gets and stays popular, see if it has no ads then. The economics of personal interest sites didn't change in the sense that they're any harder to make now compared to the mid-90s. The economics that changed is the Internet now has billions of users and attention being monetized can make you a lot richer now than then. It's very hard for people to see an opportu…

Vibe slop? The structure of the site is quite solid, the UX decisions are spot on, the data looks good to me that knows little about this stuff, and it is entertaining and informative. This was not a one shot, a human out a lot of effort into this. Yeah it is imperfect and was maybe not ready for the HN front page hug. But I say, bravo to the person or team!

> the data looks good to me that knows little about this stuff

Do you see the problem here?

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

#186

Post by janalsncm » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

glenstein wrote: post #161

butlike wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 diff…

If the implementation was correct it wouldn’t be hard to let the user choose either option.

Yes, many births would be within the last 200 years but it’s still very different to be a man born in the year 1950 in New York vs a woman in 1950 in rural China.

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

#187

Post by dudul » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

garyrob wrote: post #10

I wrote a short story based on a similar scenario. (Caveat, I did it with AI help, but my ideas and many iterations and me doing final editing to get it the way I want). https://garyrobinson.net/2026/08/18/everyone-who-will-ever-b...

What does the short story have to do with the scenario exactly? Seems completely unrelated.

And OMG, you need to edit the AI slop way way more. This is unreadable.

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

#188

Post by teiferer » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:40 PM UTC

no_multitudes wrote: post #145

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-…

I got a man in India 1000 years ago who died at 92. Impressive yet rather unlikely.

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

#189

Post by golem14 » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #146

gradus_ad wrote: post #127

Earlier 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.

"random" != "uniformly random", if you want to be pedantic.

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

#190

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 9:43 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.

[deleted]