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What are people doing? Live-ish estimates based on global population dynamics
- rightbyte 1y agoReassuring to know there are 129 million bottoms joining me in bathrooms about now.
- saagarjha 1y agoThere are presumably some more bottoms joining in for the other categories too.
- musicale 1y agoThat does it, I'm going back to sleep.
- dgfitz 1y agoI’m not even mad, I’m impressed.
- Willingham 1y agoYour design of this page and your whole website is beautiful. How many years experience do you have with front end development?
- Sn0wCoder 1y agoAgreed. The world map showing evening, night and morning is a great visual to have updated in real time.
- siavosh 1y agoWonderful. I always found the idea of billions of people particularly famous people doing something (anything) simultaneously as me, unbelievable for some reason. This somehow brings this issue front and center on a global scale. Well done.
- wanderingstan 1y agoThere is something sobering and humbling at “seeing” 2 people die every second. To realize that entire lifetimes of memory and experiences are disappearing so quickly. Though I’ve probably seen that stat before, the site does a good job of making it feel “live” with the updating population count and live stats on everything else.
- jpk 1y agoFor sure, but on balance, during that second: - A smart little girl aced her math test. - A loving father smiled at his kid. - A grandma blew out her 80th birthday candles. Lifetimes in progress, building their own memories and experiences. So, two people may have died in that second, but 8 billion people lived.
- userbinator 1y agoAnd every second, another 4 are born.
- bvirb 1y agoAccurate, saw restroom use tick up 1
- alwa 1y agoThe changelog indicates: > * Fixed "Intimacy" count to always be an even number. The FTX polycule would like a word… Beautiful work!
- netsharc 1y ago"What would you do if you had a million dollars Lawrence?"
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoHeck, Betty Dodson would like a word. I don't need anyone's help to be intimate!
- ed_mercer 1y agoCan one not be intimate with oneself?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- yonatan8070 1y agoOr with more than one other person
- bikamonki 1y agoWonderful work! If 0.13% are in jail, how many do you estimate are positively changing the world?
- danihh 1y agoAm I the only one surprised & perplexed about a phone representing “leisure”?
- gertlex 1y agoWhat single emoji would you choose instead? It seems reasonable to me.
- jagaerglad 1y agothe dancing or partying ones, although admittedly we all scroll the phone more
- danihh 1y agoBeach umbrella, couch, person in lotus position, a book… Nothing outrageous, but it’s an interesting shift of perspective.
- gertlex 1y agoThe couch emoji I'd agree with! I suspect the others are far less common activities than browsing phone or lounging :)
- fredski42 1y agoSeeing the population still increase, this must be completely attributed to Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
- saagarjha 1y agoThere are still some parts of Asia that are below replacement birth rates.
- thomasanders0n 1y agoI think you meant to say above
- saagarjha 1y agoYes, thanks
- ggm 1y agoI'm surprised at the surface difference between birth and death rate because we're told the aggregate rate of increase is declining. The difference between the two suggests birth outruns death by 2:1 which feels steep for something which will max out in 2050. I realise sub-saharan Africa continues to be high birthrate and is a huge component of world population, but the trend of increased economic activity to lower birth rate is really high worldwide, and most western economies in the OECD would be in decline, were it not for migration.
- tonmoy 1y agoThat could be because most people in the world currently are young. Hypothetically even if birth rate remains constant but suddenly a huge portion of the population start dying due to age then it could flip suddenly
- decimalenough 1y agoWikipedia: "It may take several generations for a change in the total fertility rate to be reflected in birth rate, because the age distribution must reach equilibrium. For example, a population that has recently dropped below replacement-level fertility will continue to grow, because the recent high fertility produced large numbers of young couples, who would now be in their childbearing years." See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum
- jonahx 1y agoLove it. If you plan on adding to it, would be cool see (maybe via heatmap) where the births/deaths are happening.
- lanewinfield 1y agocool idea and nice execution! one thought: maybe make the time scale on your mini graphs a little longer so you can see larger changes?
- jen729w 1y agoJust the other day, walking through a sleepy country town (Hawks Nest, NSW, AU), I was explaining to my partner how I'd love to have an AR overlay of the town that told me, statistically, what each person in each house was doing. Ideally it'd consider an estimate of the house's value and use vision to assess the real-time appearance of the property to further hone its model. If you could do that next, please. Oh and buy me a Vision Pro. Cheers.
- gonzo41 1y agoThankfully, ABS has those stats for you. https://dbr.abs.gov.au/region.html?lyr=sa2&rgn=106031124 https://dbr.abs.gov.au/region.html?lyr=sa2&rgn=106031124
- nishRC 1y ago16% are doing paid work? I always assumed that would be higher
- jader201 1y agoFull time people spend roughly 24% of their week working. Factoring in PTO/holidays, roughly 20 years of education and 20 years retirement, part time and unemployment, that number drops quite a bit (I’d guess roughly half, to 12%). Of course, some people start work earlier and retire later, and some work more than 40 hours per week. So to me, 16% seems about right.
- 93po 1y agowas only 9% when i looked but then i realized its bc i live in opposite time of most of the world's population
- adt 1y ago>The initial concept was explored with the help of AI (specifically, Gemini), iterating through prompts to develop the core logic for a dynamic simulation. The goal was to create something engaging, all within a single HTML file – a testament to what can be achieved with focused iteration and modern web technologies. https://humans.maxcomperatore.com/why.html https://humans.maxcomperatore.com/why.html
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoCompared to my parents, I spent 20x the time parenting (the new normal) and I'm not sure these stats reflect that. Our global birthrate is a unconcerning 2.3 and worldwide restroom use continues apace. Sex is edging out smoking but not by much.
- jl6 1y agoA net positive birth rate is still concerning. 8.2 billion people is a lot. All of the world’s problems, from energy sourcing to food production to climate change become harder and harder as the population continues to grow. It’s easy to be complacent in developed countries because birth rates have come way down, probably because of increased wealth and better education/opportunity for women and girls - but this is not yet the case in developing countries, and the nature of exponential growth is that if it exists anywhere locally, then it will eventually come to exist globally. It really doesn’t help to cut aid programmes to places that are most in need of development.
- derektank 1y agoThe Club for Rome estimates that global population will peak at just below 9 billion by the middle of the century and then begin a sharp decline, ending at under 7 billion by 2100. This is really bad if your country's pension and welfare system assumes a certain ratio of people will be in the labor force, relative to the number of old and retired people, as most developed countries do. A declining birth rate is much worse than a slightly positive birth rate.
- jl6 1y agoMaybe time to fix the ponzi approach to pensions and welfare instead of continuing to assume unlimited population growth on a finite planet. Edit: it’s not that I don’t believe the population projections showing a peak later in the century (although I think the Club of Rome one in particular is inaccurate), it’s that these projections are based on there being continued effort to bring birth rates down, hence now not being the time for complacency or defunding these efforts.
- sinuhe69 1y agoRelated: I find the simulation and visualization of the same topic (albeit for US only) by DataFlow much more engaging and comprehensible. The project is based on data of a US survey. https://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-americans/ https://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-amer...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ffsm8 1y agoPretty entertaining to watch the bubbles change color/activity but be unable to go to their designated area because they're unable to break away from the bulk of their neighbors. Like peer pressure, but really just an artifact of the chosen technology for the visualization
- yard2010 1y agoIsn't rl peer pressure also an artifact of the chosen "tech", or in other words - an artifact of perspective
- pona-a 1y agoI think something similar can be done on the world-wide scale with MTUS (Multinational Time Use Study) data [0], with some creative interpolation. From what I gathered, OP's simulation is more of a live Fermi estimate, so it would be interesting to see the same done with greater precision. [0] https://www.timeuse.org/mtus https://www.timeuse.org/mtus
- jrussino 1y agoI find it neat that the simulation appears to "pulse" almost like a heartbeat, because so many of our activities are tied to the clock and state changes disproportionately occur on the hour or half-hour. It's especially noticeable when using the "fast" playback option. How different this would have looked before the invention of mechanized timekeeping!
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoIs anyone else shocked by how low the Paid Work and Education bars are? Is there a way to see this for specific countries?
- Turskarama 1y agoCombined they make up about 33% of all activity, which is what you would expect if 100% of people spent every single day doing one of those things for ~8 hours. It's pretty much right in line with what I'd expect, possibly even a bit higher considering small children and retirees.
- montag 1y agoCould easily extend the idea to zoom in on the map, constraining to various region sizes... The information gets a little "washed out" when you combine all the timezones into one blob.
- fedeb95 1y agothe declining number of people engaged in warfare is the saddest statistic.
- satellite2 1y agoIntimacy being almost the exact same number as warfare is pretty sad. On a more joyous note, it's really neat projet, thanks.
- ithkuil 1y agomake love not war!
- the_arun 1y agomake love at war is also a great option
- ssm008 1y agoYeah made me wonder. But then again warfare is 24/7 while intimacy once every now and then.
- ides_dev 1y agoI thought the same thing. I also found it surprising that the number of people on a smoking break was quite a bit higher than either of those - I wonder how many transition from intimacy to smoke break :D
- mrweasel 1y agoAlso sad that 7-8 times more a on a smoking break. Let's normalise taking a sex break.
- rightbyte 1y agoOne of the benefits of WFH.
- DocTomoe 1y agoAs I watch it right now (18:38 CEST), it's about twice as much intimacy than war, so I guess it takes active war zones into account. Make love, not war.
- barraponto 1y ago
- avvt4avaw 1y agoWhy do the estimated births/deaths per second counters have so much flicker? Surely you don't actually believe that the expected number of births/deaths per second fluctuates at 1dp precision multiple times per second?
- avvt4avaw 1y ago> The continuously updating global population counter is based on current aggregate birth and death rates (approximating values such as those from the U.S. Census Bureau International Database or UN DESA). The "live" births and deaths per second are statistically generated fluctuations around these averages to enhance the dynamic feel. Ok, so you added high-frequency random noise to the estimated averages to make it feel more realistic. To me, this makes it feel less realistic. Anyway, don't mean to gripe, this is a cool project!
- ides_dev 1y agoIt would be interesting if it could fluctuate depending on birth rates at different times of day in different countries. That way, it could at least have a bit of dynamism if, for example, India had the highest global birthrate and most births there occured during daylight hours.
- oshkar0 1y agoYou'd have to add much more fluctuation to be realistic, it's a poisson process, about 25% of the seconds should be with zero births.
- LeifCarrotson 1y ago25% of individual seconds, but the average over an hour should be rock solid to several decimal places. I think the more interesting fluctuations are those which change on an hourly ("checking the clock", spikes when people hear a chime or get notifications on the hour), daily ("eating lunch" spikes when UTC+8 hits lunchtime in eastern China and craters when it's noon in the middle of the Pacific), or other periodic basis.
- whyage 1y agoRoughly the same number of people who make love, make war. That's sad.
- davedx 1y agoPretty interesting project. A dynamic snapshot of human activity
- bspammer 1y agoFun suggestion: move the "Live Viewers" counter to be a real entry on the site at the bottom. Viewing this site: 40 (0.0000005%)
- io84 1y agoGreat execution. Interesting to think about the peaks and troughs of global activity. The Sleep numbers make a big claim: Right after Europe and West Africa have woken up (i.e. now) it says only 350 million people (4.25%) are sleeping. It's 01:08 in Anchorage and 06:08 in Recife. Over 1 billion people live in the Americas between these two time zones. Seems implausible that only a third of them are sleeping?
- theelous3 1y agoI think this is just going off sunrise and set +- some estimate. Which does not work as well the farther from the equator you get. It's light for hours up here before you wake, and we sleep like 2-4 hours after sunset.
- Aardwolf 1y agoMissed opportunity to add a "viewing this dashboard (0.00000125%)" stat since it already has the live viewers counter :)
- cylinderthought 1y agoyes. dumb me
- hnaccountme 1y agoFunny how intimacy and warfare have the same numbers
- tokai 1y agoNot really when both numbers are made up.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- luke-stanley 1y agoCool idea but for the actual results I have no confidence in it because it has grounding shown like pop sizes, locations / timezones etc, it's just vibe coded with stuff like this: "// Approx 7.68 hours - fundamental physiological need.", "label: 'Nutrition', // User's concise label". I don't see any real population dynamics.
- luke-stanley 1y ago*It has NO grounding shown
- FrustratedMonky 1y ago6 million intimate? Wonder how much this tracks stats by country, so as day/night moves along, can see bigger/lesser swings in the trend. Or is it just a flat ratio to population.
- tokai 1y agoThat number is half of any serious estimation of the worlds prison population. I don't think most of the numbers are tracked.
- thenoblesunfish 1y agoOnly 6-7% of people are sleeping? Wouldn't you expect that to be more like 30%?
- aaomidi 1y agoDepends on the time, no? Population not being evenly distributed etc
- TacticalCoder 1y ago[dead]
- perilunar 1y agoyes. 18.7% at the moment.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- oharapj 1y agoIf half the earth's population lived in the pacific ocean, sure!
- randomstate 1y agoNot sure how I should understand `Warfare` and `Intimacy` having the exact same numbers ;-)
- api 1y agoThere’s the problem.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 1y agoMeans whatever the weapon, it’s fucking all the same
- diggan 1y agoRight now at 14:54:05 UTC, it seems like Intimacy is at 0.16% and Warfare at 0.10%, so we got that going for us at least. Moving in the right direction at least.
- gitroom 1y ago[dead]
- ta1243 1y agoIntimacy 20,580,717 (0.25%) Warfare 8,582,378 (0.10%) Glad to see "Make Love Not War" still works.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoIs it plausible that the order of magnitude of those going to the restroom and those being intimate would be the same? My life is very different if so!
- perilunar 1y agowhen I looked at it restroom use was 1.4% and intimacy was 0.13%, so an order of magnitude more. Seems about right.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- perilunar 1y agoSome stats I'd like to see added: * number of people in the air (Grok estimates 1.2 to 1.8 million, or 0.015% – 0.022%), but flightradar24.com probably has a better estimate. * number of people in space (13 according to whoisinspace.com, so 0.00000016%) * number of people at sea (?)