Wharton Prof Ethan Mollick Launches 'Veil of History': Randomly Draw a Life From All 117B Humans Ever Born
mtizard · x · 2026-09-04
Wharton AI professor Ethan Mollick built The Veil of History, a website based on Rawls' 1971 "veil of ignorance" thought experiment: press one button and you're randomly assigned a life among all 117 billion humans ever born.
Because births skew heavily toward the past, your draw almost certainly lands pre-modern: 81% of all humans were born before 1650, 94% before 1900, and only 7% are alive today. The ten most probable lives are nearly all poor farmers in old Asia — no electricity, no clean water, and childhood mortality near 50%.
The site includes interactive charts of births by era and region, plus a map tracking where the center of humanity shifted across 12 eras.
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