A Physics Forum Member in King Arthur's Court

[DaveC426913]

But if you are time traveling with no useable wealth except knowledge...then you are coming back as a bum in the streets of London

The technicalities of the actual "how do I get through the first week and find a bed to sleep in" are meant to be beyond the scope of the question. Assume some kind soul takes mercy and puts you up until you can make yourself useful.

I do not mean to lead this in a particular direction but I keep coming back to these Star Trek episodes for my imagination:

Thine Own Self, wherein Data, suffering from amnesia finds himself in a village roughly equivalent to Renaissance Earth and tries to find a cure for what ails the village people.

Another one, though much less analogous, is The City of the Edge of Forever, Kirk and Spock survive in 1930 by the mercy of Edith Keeler who, in exchange for menial duties, puts them up in a room in her New York mission.


Oh - and for the record: no, I did not make this thread as any kind of prelude to writing my own time travel story - it just happens to be something I think about a lot when I think about my place in the world.

 

[erobz]

The technicalities of the actual "how do I get through the first week and find a bed to sleep in" are meant to be beyond the scope of the question. Assume some kind soul takes mercy and puts you up until you can make yourself useful.

I do not mean to lead this in a particular direction but I keep coming back to these Star Trek episodes for my imagination:

Thine Own Self, wherein Data, suffering from amnesia finds himself in a village roughly equivalent to Renaissance Earth and tries to find a cure for what ails the village people.

Another one, though much less analogous, is The City of the Edge of Forever, Kirk and Spock survive in 1930 by the mercy of Edith Keeler who, in exchange for menial duties, puts them up in a room in her New York mission.


Oh - and for the record: no, I did not make this thread as any kind of prelude to writing my own time travel story - it just happens to be something I think about a lot when I think about my place in the world.

I'd imagine you don't need to time travel. If you are really worried about it you could probably catch a flight to many places that exist in the world today and try it? You could make it an autobiography.

 

[jedishrfu]

I just don't see this major difference in how men and women we treated back then...It seems like the perspective of the aristocrats. I also had a great aunt near his age who skipped grades and graduated high school early. I live in backwoods rural America, and so did they. Should she have went to college while my grandfather was sent over to crawl around in the mud getting shot at in his 20's? Same with my other grandfather, only he was 18.

You're missing the point of the thread. Some posters suggested changing the mindset of people in power by showing how women were equal to men in intelligence back in history. In contrast, I was arguing that historically aristocratic men would limit women whenever they could.

 

[DaveC426913]

I'd imagine you don't need to time travel. If you are really worried about it you could probably catch a flight to many places that exist in the world today and try it? You could make it an autobiography.

A fair point, but they don't suffer from primitive knowledge, they suffer from primitive access. Unless I went into the jungles of the amazon, I probably wouldn't need to convince anyone why clean water, soap and penicillin is a good thing.

 

[DaveC426913]

The meme.

 

[Algr]

The biggest barrier would probably be the powerful fearing social change. So sadly, the best way to get ideas adopted is to show them as useful for military applications. (Defense, of course.)

Everyone has mentioned sanitation, I agree. If the goal is to advance humanity as fast as possible, the next thing I would concentrate on is the scientific method: Control and experiment groups to determine what works and what doesn't. Finally, what I know of chemistry is certainly incomplete, but it is enough to get their own researchers making progress.

 

[Hornbein]

But if you are time traveling with no useable wealth except knowledge...then you are coming back as a bum in the streets of London?

Knowledge is power.

 

[Hornbein]

You're missing the point of the thread. Some posters suggested changing the mindset of people in power by showing how women were equal to men in intelligence back in history. In contrast, I was arguing that historically aristocratic men would limit women whenever they could.

Catherine the Great. Queens Victoria and Elizabeth I. Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, and Nefertiti. Hurrem Sultan during the Sultanate of Women. 鄭一嫂[Zheng Yi Sao] ruled southern China as a pirate. Theodora of Rome, Empress Elisabeth of Austria brokered the Austria-Hungary merger, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Elisabeth_of_Austria

 

[Algr]

Those are other people. The rules that everyone else had to obey often broke down at the top.

 

[renormalize]

Those are other people. The rules that everyone else had to obey often broke down at the top.

Still true today.

 

[Baluncore]

In contrast, I was arguing that historically aristocratic men would limit women whenever they could.

There was no need for men to do that.

Women have always competed amongst themselves for the attention of the alpha male. Those women are taken advantage of, by that male, and the successful women benefitted. It was those women, who limited and disempowered other women, seen as their competition. The same is true today.

Meanwhile, malnutrition, disease, the death of women in childbirth, and of their children, has limited the entire community, men included.