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

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

#51
post #48

"You have died of Dysentery [on the Korean Peninsula in 3064 BCE at 2 months old]" I was actually a bit surprised since it also said I was exclusively breastfed which seems to be fairly protective against diarrhea. I have a feeling this didn't account for all the joint probability distributions...

Strangely, I too, died in the Korean Peninsula at 8 months old, but circa 6000 BCE.

Hmm, I was at the Korean Penisula too. How representatively random is this thing?

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

#52

> You have drawn a boy, born in the Korean Peninsula in 3394 BCE > Life expectancy at birth: 28 yrs > Died before age 5: 42% > Died before age 15: 50% i knew life expectancy was obviously lower, but those stats were a bit eye opening. unfortunately, died at 3 from an accident.

I do wonder if that life expectancy is dragged significantly down by all the ways you can die early on in life, so that it's not so much that 28 years is an old age for the time as it is a function of all things that prevent you from getting to old age. And so if you went to a town square or market in that time (if it's a time that had such a thing), perhaps it might still be perfectly normal to see people in their 3…

That's exactly the case. Overall average life expenctancy as adult didn't change much from older times - about 15 years more.

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

#53

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 guess you are right, but it makes it more interesting if the picks are not almost all from the recent past. On the other hand, I would also guess that spreading the picks evenly across the time range might result in many being from times with little data to differentiate them.

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

#55
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...

Without wishing to be unkind, this reads a lot more as 'one-shot with AI' than 'many iterations'; if you truly did that much editing, you didn't put it where it showed. You've got all the AI favourite names and rhythms at once in the second paragraph, for example.

Yeah, I think the AI probably shows. But in fact it is the result of many iterations.

But what I was trying to get across are the ideas, not the language. I think it you were to read the whole thing, you'd probably find it interesting. But if not, feel free to let me know.

But my hypothesis is that there are people with skills for ideas that have the potential to be interesting stories, but not necessarily great prose skills; I don't think those necessarily line up in the same person. Up until now, to write a worthwhile short story you had to be among the best at both.

Maybe AI can help change that, and maybe (I hypothesize), that would be for the better. I understand that such a hypothesis would be controversial, but to me, it feels worth exploring.

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

#56

I am really happy to live in the modern age. It is quite amazing to think that people are facing cardiovascular disease and cancer instead of random parasites nowadays. Modern medicine is such a miracle.

> instead of random parasites nowadays

Maybe MAHA will bring this back, like they did measles.

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

#57

I am really happy to live in the modern age. It is quite amazing to think that people are facing cardiovascular disease and cancer instead of random parasites nowadays. Modern medicine is such a miracle.

How many random parasites has modern medicine removed from you? Likely you never even had one. It's not just medicine, we also have abundant, safe food, clean water and warm housing

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

#58

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.

How near is near? With ~100 billion people having ever lived, the odds of a randomly selected life falling within the past couple of centuries are not all that high.

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

#60

Has anyone managed to roll a life later than ~600CE?

Yes, but I definitely think the probabilities are off - the explanation, which I agree with, states "a random birth is far more likely to fall near the present." But it appears to be drawing much more uniformly from the years than you'd expect given the probability curve (population curve) pictured.

Bear in mind that the population curve defaults to a log scale on the year axis. If you switch it over to linear, that big fat area at the end shrinks to a needle-like spike..
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