About this project
Almost nothing about a life is chosen.
For a few minutes, someone else's odds are yours. That is the whole idea, and everything on the site serves it.
Why it exists
The goal is empathy.
How to read a life
Four leaves. Four degrees of choice.
Every attribute in a drawn life is marked for how much say that person had over it. Four filled leaves means a free choice. One means none at all, and the total is always smaller than people expect.
- Given, not chosen
- Given, partly changeable
- Partly in their control
- Fully their choice
The method
How a life is drawn
- A country, weighted by how many children are born there each year. Most draws land where most children are born.
- Every attribute sampled from published national statistics.
- The odds applied honestly, the good ones and the brutal ones.
- A face last, so the numbers stop being numbers.
Honesty
What is real, what is not
Real
The statistics, the probabilities, the laws.
Not real
The person. Name, face and day are composites.
A drawn life is a plausible average, never a prediction. Real people are always more than their odds.
“Almost nothing about a life is chosen.”
Be born again