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

#321

Post by ncr100 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #300

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-…

My person was “orphaned at 34” Great idea but it needs more testing.

An example of:

- Quality With A "K" !

Is AI able to easily catch these kinds of errors with a carefully crafted addendum to the prompt?

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

#322

Post by softwaredoug » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

Drawing these random unrecorded lives makes me think a lot of Train Dreams a movie/book about a kind of unremarkable, random guy in the Northwest who sits witnessing history, dying with nobody remembering him.

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

#323

Post by mathieu_aithos » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 7:23 PM UTC

Elon Musk said that (without him ;)) world demography gone a decline, as it is in Japan or Italy.

If radical right political parties arrive in Europe for exemple, are women gone a make children again? Or are we going to massively clone ourselves to conquer other planets?

Or finally let humanity slowing disappear letting robots replacing them definitively ?

What do you think?

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

#324

Post by roywiggins » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

doginasuit wrote: post #248

This is brilliant. I think it could stand to be a little more imaginative in their stories. It seems like it should be possible to do that while still conveying an accurate picture. "He made his living as a professional" is simply a wasted opportunity. There shouldn't be anything so vague. If you we're listening to a story, you would feel cheated. Embrace your idea.

A similar site, also LLM-assisted, that does a better and more evocative job of composing stories.

https://random-lives.github.io/random-lives/

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

#325

Post by BLACKCRAB » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 3:35 AM UTC

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

#326

Post by Quothling » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 8:03 AM UTC

morpheos137 wrote: post #308

Quothling wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the data looks good to me that knows little about this stuff I majored in history. I'd say the data is misleading. I drew a boy "In the Ganges Plain, 1411 BCE". According to the summed up data he had a 54% risk of dying of neonatal tetanus, sepsis or dysentery. Which isn't wrong as such, but it would probably have been better to sum it up with all the other diseases, parasites and infections that would be needed to…

Did see the coast? Pray tell where outside of Russia did vikings live in a non martime environment? Have you seen a map of scandanavia?

I live in Denmark. So yes. I have seen a map of Scandinavia. People didn't travel. Even here in Denmark which is tiny compared to Norway and Sweden, if you only ever go in a 10-15km radius of your home then there is a good chance you won't see the ocean.

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

#327

Post by morpheos137 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

Quothling wrote: post #326

morpheos137 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did see the coast? Pray tell where outside of Russia did vikings live in a non martime environment? Have you seen a map of scandanavia?

I live in Denmark. So yes. I have seen a map of Scandinavia. People didn't travel. Even here in Denmark which is tiny compared to Norway and Sweden, if you only ever go in a 10-15km radius of your home then there is a good chance you won't see the ocean.

This is true. I concede. However I am not sure that the majority of people were as imobile as you say even in mideveal times there were religious pilgrimages, fairs. Maybe the lowest stratum of non free society lived in a land locked mannor and never saw the sea in Denmark but I wonder if it was the majority of people in a lifetime?