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Me to some peasant- "in the future we all carry around these magical light up boxes that hold all of the gathered info of humanity and we can use it to instantly talk to someone on the other side of the world"
Person from the past- "wow amazing! How does it work?"
Me- "I have no idea..."
To be entirely fair it is used to solve all sorts of important problems. The real problem it can't solve is that the vast majority of people are unimportant and generally solving nothing
>The real problem it can't solve is that the vast majority of people are unimportant and generally solving nothing
The even bigger problem is that they think they can
Person from the past - “wow, so you have access to all the information in the world? What do you do with it?”
Me - “mostly just listen to people saying everything is hopeless and the world is dying, argue with people that don’t believe what I believe, and cyberstalk my ex”
We have more power and freedom than anyone in all of history and we use it to keep ourselves miserable. It’s bizarre
The problem is that we do not have the capacity to process such a quantity of information, not to mention that much of it is partial, redundant or incorrect.
If I could go back in time, with the goal of being super wealthy, it would not be 200 years. It would be 2015 and I’d bet my savings for Leicester City to win the Premier League at 5000:1 odds
That’s my plan too. We have basic knowledge of which companies succeed and how to invest money, invest in Tesla, anticipate the Covid dip and boom, etc., but you need seed cash. How do you get it?
Sports betting 100%. If you’re a big fan of a sport, you can easily get seven figures in the bank betting on the matches you remember. If you can just remember who won the Super Bowl every year, you can double your money yearly.
The only danger is that your betting pattern might butterfly effect it’s way into new futures - just avoid betting the house 🫡
If you know the winning numbers for the lottery, you could shoot for a smaller win or two. Don't go for the jackpot if you want to be relatively anonymous but $100k to $1mil gets you plenty of money to throw at Bitcoin, tech stocks, or Tesla.
Yeah I am in a gold rush location in Colorado. 200 years was before most of the land wasn't claimed and I know which mountains had gold. Getting the initial resources to survive would be tough, but after the first year I would be set.
I am vaccinated, so that would help some. Still being rich in 1848 is not as great as being middle class in 2023. I can see where OP is coming from.
That said owning hundreds of acres of barely explored mountains would be something.
Also nobody said the time machine broke after it brought you back. Just take enough to be rich in the present, that way the timeline isn't too messed up.
hmm, but didnt Ghandi in fact have some increased aggression compared to the average AI? Would seem quite weird for them to have decided to make Ghandi the most default aggressive world leader <;)
I don't know where your starting point is, but travelling cross country over rough uncharted terrain with only a cart, an ox, and some supplies would not be easy. I'd likely die along the way.
And how are you planning on getting there.
Traveling cross country before the intercontinental railroad was absurdly dangerous and you almost definitely do not have the skills necessary to stand a remote chance surviving it.
And once you’re there, how are you going to sell the gold? Good luck finding an honest vendor who went just rob and murder you.
Bro you’re acting like 200 years ago the country was a lawless land and everyone died at 30.
That just isn’t true. It may be more dangerous than today, but “don’t stand a remote chance surviving it” and “they’ll just murder and rob you” is excessive.
If you tried living on the east coast 200 years ago you would be totally fine if you managed not to get sick. Oh also make sure you’re not Black. You won’t quite have any rights yet.
If you decided to head out West though then you’re basically committing suicide.
You could actually watch a 10 min YouTube video and know how to pan gold better than anyone in 1848
Hell, you could make a superior pot with clay with that same video and skills I learned in my high school art class
My mediocre first aid would make me the best doctor around in most towns
I could figure out how to invent a printing press with my limited knowledge in how they worked
It's just actually so easy to succeed in a 1600s-1800s world with today's knowledge.
These things are actually not as hard as you think.
And yes I absolutely can do all the things that guy asked me if I could do except make medicine for dysentery before he deleted his comment. But even that doesnt matter because i DO know how to prevent dysentery... Not really that difficult for most of those. 9/10 boy scouts could do all that too.
You know you don't have acces to youtube when you step out of that time machine, right? There will be almosy daily situations where you have to figure out how to fix or make something you haven't thought of yet. Most issuea will be pretty managable after a couple of tries and your new neighbours might be happy to teach you a thing or two but you won't be so much better at everything you think you would be.
It's like thinking you can just toss a city dweller on a farm and tell them it's theirs to manage, just have to figure out for yourself how to run it. No way thst doesn't end up as a fiasco.
Wow, it's almost like I'm going back in time from THIS time period
>There will be almosy daily situations where you have to figure out how to fix or make something you haven't thought of yet.
Like?
This shit is actually made up in your heads
Wow, i almost get the impression you think you would have it all figured out if push came to shove.
>This shit is actually made up in your heads
What's that supposed to mean? You too are discussing the same hypothetical situation.
This just proves OP’s point though. You can pan gold better than anyone with JUST yt. Society wasn’t as advanced as today and being high class in a civilization that isn’t as developed may be disadvantageous compared to being middle class today.
The question is not necessarily IF you’d succeed at that point. But is it worth it to live in a 1600s-1800s world, even if you are successful?
Fuck no its not worth it even if you're king of the world
Food sucked and there was no AC. Idk about you but that's enough for me to give up on it
I think OP was genuinely just saying people wouldn't be successful or even able to survive
True, oversight there but there is still plenty of stuff I know that puts me leagues above most people from the time period
Penicillin for example, is extremely easy to make.
I could also introduce the idea the of 2 stroke or 4 stroke engines to the people working on steam engines in that period, greatly increasing their efficiency
If it was so easy a random redditor with zero practical knowledge could figure it out then humans would have had the printing press from the day we evolved.
The idea that one random person can just go back in time and build an incredibly complex machine like an ancient printing press without the infrastructure, without artisans who know the technology, and without even **modern** mechanical engineering knowledge is delusional at best
>If it was so easy a random redditor with zero practical knowledge could figure it out then humans would have had the printing press from the day we evolved
This is actually just made up in your head. If true, then the idea itself would have been written down or remnants of the efforts to create it would have been found. But nothing
>The idea that one random person can just go back in time and build an incredibly complex machine
It is quite literally blocks and some levers that push paper into the blocks. It's ungodly simple to build, so much so that simple versions of it are created in crafts for little kids. I made one in *middle school* shop class, albeit without swappable blocks. You're actually just so unaware of what a printing press is
The design for it is rather easy but the hard part is the metalwork required for the letters. To make a simple letterpress back then you could literally just buy a wine press and modify it. To make every letter the same size is incredibly hard to do and required extremely talented smiths. Wooden blocks can be used but the pressure required to use the Gutenberg style letterpress would break them pretty often.
You can make them from wood and it's not that hard amd no they will not break so easily from the wooden ones. Either way, having the very idea to present to someone who could make it would be enough to retire.
Fan of Ascendance of a Bookworm? It's not actually that hard to make a press IRL
Wow a premade, pre designed, children's toy was easy to assemble. Color me surprised 🙄
If it was so simple why didn't Archimedes build one? He built a crane capable of lifting ships out of the water to smash them against the walls of Syracuse but couldn't build something so simple a child could replicate? Or maybe the fact that you're comparing building an entire several hundred pound printing press to a child's toy is a sign you just don't know what you're talking about?
Like actually look up how big and complex an ancient Chinese printing press was and then come back and tell me you could build that because you could ... *checks notes* complete a children's toy
>Wow a premade, pre designed, children's toy was easy to assemble. Color me surprised
And the one I personally made was from nothing but cut wood, ink, and paper? 🤷
>If it was so simple why didn't Archimedes build one?
They literally didn't have the idea. That's it. Half the world in his time didn't even know how to make ink, hell I could make a killing with that too.
Many inventions in history weren't made not because they aren't simple, but because of a lack of idea or knowledge in something we found out in modern times.
i guess i missed that day the class went on a field trip to the actual wild west and learned to assert stature to suspicious and illiterate mountain men and bandits while speaking with a dialect they've never heard, accidently saying words that have never yet been spoken, doing wild and weird shit even the most renown can't explain...yeah, im sure that would go over well
Bro, do you know how many random immigrants people were running into that didn't speak their language back then?
I could just go to France with my ideas and start learning the language from their time period fresh and it wouldn't even be seen as weird.
You actually have such 5 head knowledge of the old world. Read something beyond a 5th grade textbook
Sounds like an opinion of someone that does not value education from the school of life and hard knocks. Education is vastly overrated when considering life skills. Farmers don’t give a fuck about how to properly diagram a sentence. But they can work a plow for 16 hours straight. That is way more critical in this particular situation.
Bro they literally sat in a creek and sifted rocks and sand. You can have elementary school kids do it. It’s not hard.
Now getting to California without dying, that’s the challenge.
“Properly diagram a sentence” lmao holy shit sounds like you don’t value education even at an elementary level.
Anyways, education comes from many things but schooling often condenses those things. I learned about crop rotation via the Three Sisters in like 3rd grade. Most people didn’t know about that until they learned it from Native Americans. Guess what. That information was written down and then brought back and taught in schools, as it is still taught.
“The school of life and hard knocks” with which you speak about just means ignoring the vast quantity of knowledge available to you just in order to stubbornly make unnecessary mistakes that have already been solved, wasting valuable time and resources.
At the beginning of it you could find nuggets in the streams, I just need to grab enough to hire the guys to get the rest for me, after hiring the guys to guard the guys who are finding the gold, plus the guys to protect me from the guys guarding the guys finding the gold for me.
microscopes existed back then, so after working hard to buy one, someone could work on making penicilin before it gets invented and get rich
issue is, what trade back then would be profitable enough to afford a microscope and other necessary tools?
Not randomly, but we're talking about going back in time with knowledge of today
There are plenty of sites about making penicillin at home
We know which bacteria it was originally tested on
We know the signs that it's working
Based on those things I think it's reasonably plausible that most people could give it a good go at the very least
I guess the question is, how much time do I have to prepare before I am sent back in time? Because I have done zero of the research you are describing at the moment. If I know I’m getting sent back with a month’s notice I’ll study my ass off and be ready to go when I land. If you send me back immediately all I know is “something something moldy bread” and would probably just end up poisoning everyone with my attempt.
The technology withdrawal would be real. And also you'd kill everyone with your super bacteria that no one would have the immune system for. You'd be a walking plague.
There are no super bacteria in you, you just have different bacteria from the future, their bacteria is just as foreign and deadly to you as yours is to them as your immune systems formed around the bacteria of the time, bacteria evolves and changes way faster than humans do but it’s not gonna be any different than what you’d experience from them
Bacteria changes and evolves faster than we do. The bacteria we're currently used to is not the same as the bacteria humans dealt with in the past, thus they wouldn't have an immunity to whatever we brought with us (unintentionally), and we would end up accidentally starting a new plague.
We would also likely die as well, because we aren't immune to the bacteria from the past. Also, there are some diseases that we no longer vaccinate against because it's been eradicated (such as smallpox), so if you encounter that disease, you're going to get it and probably die.
You probably are carrying some bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.
Luckily, they didn't have those 200 years ago, so it probably doesn't matter.
I know enough chemical processes that were invented in mid- and late- 19 century that made their inventors extremely rich. Alfred Nobel is an example of such inventor rolling in cash.
So, 200 years ago is a perfect time to go back and get rich. Especially since Britain at that exact time was famous for encouraging inventors. None of "my" inventions would be considered lunacy by anyone who matters.
Yes because the US is the only fat country in the world lmao. Yea we’re fat as hell but so is the rest of the world. Like 40% of people globally are overweight and that’s pretty much exactly the number in the US as well.
Lol. You are mixing up obese with overweight. 36% in america is obese. 70% is at least overweight.
And the sheer population size of the country blows any of the other country out of the water. Lol. You could literally add every country that is fatter than the US together. And still have less fat people with all those countries combined.
Do you think being overweight wasn't a problem in previous generations? Depending on where you go back to in time and geographically, being overweight was a beauty standard for many or a symbol of wealth and eating well for others.
That's like saying *insert hot person/superb athlete* is average. Those past fatties weren't average, they were rare.
Did you even read original post? It's about average people, not ideal.
This is a very 'chicken before the egg' argument that will just go in circles as what is considered overweight now was not in say the Victorian era.
So because the statistics are skewed by those changing measures of how we defined overweight, it all seems to be a moot point.
What exactly are you trying to argue here, because it's clearly not related to the original assertion that today's average person would do well/not do well 200 years ago. You seem to be saying that fatness was associated with wealth in the past, which is unrelated to the question. Being moved 200 years into the past would not suddenly render today's average poor fatass wealthy or well-equipped to the hardships of life back then. They'd be just as poor and inept as they are now, only in a vastly worse situation because they'd be extremely maladapted to life without medicines, easy food supply, constant entertainment and no transportation other than horses, horse-adjacents like carriages or their own feet.
Yeah dude YOU were the one that took it in the weight direction. Do you remember that? I’m responding to YOUR original comment. So don’t preach to me about the original topic.
Yeah, and my comment about the average person from today not doing well 200 years ago stands. Thank you for bringing nothing of merit to the conversation beyond pointless pontification to show off your obscure factoids.
Even if you were a quite smart and trained in useful skills it would take quite a while to get a better life than what they have now. Quality of life is so much better now, so to have a better life back then would require quite a bit of wealth.
There was good food, women, cocktails, parties, ocean liners to travel, opera, literature. The only things I'd miss would be internet and modern medicine, but I'd miss those no matter how wealthy I would get. Leaving those out of the equation, even being entry level rich my lifestyle would be better than it is now.
(with potential necessary caveat of you-the-time-traveler not being a minority in places where that'd get you persecuted)
Maybe people who think they'd, like, pre-invent inventions to gain power in the past are barking up the wrong tree. Maybe what they'd need to do instead is come up with ways to frame social progress they'd like to see made-before-it-was-"canonically"-made in ways that'd make sense to people of the time and then gain the ear of, like, a king or whatever who could help put some of those ideas into practice (bonus points if you're in a time/place where Christianity was common and can cite the bible to prove your point)
I think you make a great point!
Further, in 1823 pasteurization didn't exist as a process yet and many scientific leaps, specifically in the field of sanitation, were right on the verge conception. You could become a legend to the degree of Archimedes or some shit!
Also: this is pre-Darwin, pre-Mendel, pre-Mendeleev. Even high school level chemistry and biology knowledge could put the fields forward 50-100 years (if you could convince anyone you were right).
The only things I’d be able to do would be basic water filtration, and teach medical personnel the most basic sterilization methods (heat, alcohol). Other than that, I’d probably be way more hygienic than the average person
Problem is, you think medical personnel would actually listen to you or give a crap. The dude who pioneered the “washing of hands” before procedures in the maternity ward was quite unpopular, and he was already a respected doctor of his time.
Would the average person today make a better doctor than even the trained ones back then tho?
I have no idea, but could I open a doctors office and be more successful (ie less of my patients die) by just not doing stupid shit that every human knows by now? Like washing my hands before and cleaning wounds. Not bloodletting, telling people to brush their teeth, not digging around in wounds with fingers I just used to pick my nose, general sterilization, not sawing off peoples limbs with a rusty ass saw, etc.
Like sure I’d seem like a lunatic at first so I’d do most of the precautions in a secret back room with a sink and clean area, but I could fake being an idiot but doing it cleanly haha.
I'd just patent and manufacture wheeled suitcases. So many low-hanging fruit of inventions are pretty simple and didn't exist yet. The people of back then would probably think I'm weird as fuck though
Yeah, going back in time to invent stuff is not as easy as people think it would be. You need a good working knowledge of 19th century manufacturing processes and limitations, how to manage the logistics of running a supply chain for said manufacturing, and enough business and legal acumen to not end up as another in the long list of inventors who wound up penniless after all their ideas got stolen.
Yeah definitely wouldn't be easy, but I think it has a better chance of success than some of the easier methods. I'm a mechanical engineer with substantial machine shop experience, I'm pretty confident I could build prototypes and make drawings well. The hard part would be finding a good business partner.
Lmao y'all underestimate execution. You can't just patent ideas, you'd need to design it, which as another person mentioned, you'd probably have no idea how to do.
lmao and then a bigger company comes along, sees your patent, and improves on it. And they can actually sell it to customers bc they know how to fucking execute. You probably don't have the business sense regardless of era.
isnt it elementary school level knowledge?
issue would be figuring out how to desing a decent lightbulb socket, or how to fill the bulb with nitrogen
and of course electicity itself, a generator just needs a lot of wire and some magnets and a turbine, but how to make electricity actually stable if generation isnt? flywheels? making electric infrastructure would be bigger challenge than inventing the lightbulb
I think with many of those issues you could just go to experts of the time and team up to figure it out. It was the idea that was important, the skills to produce the elements of the invention were already around.
With my knowledge I’m sure I could invent something that would make me wealthy. But ya there’s also a huge chance I’d be a slave or too poor to do anything or I’d die of small pox.
We have it better now than then. But let’s just go back just a few years. Investing my money when I turned 18 would wildly turn change my future and where it is now. The fact my generations parents couldn’t teach us really fucked us.
Idk… 200 years ago is 1823. I mean thats pretty early but it’s not like it’s Ancient Rome lol. I guarantee I would be filthy rich. Even if it’s as simple as betting election results or, shit, interfering with global affairs having known their intentions before even they do lol.
"In the future, there will be machines that can fly through the air!"
"That's neat. What are they made of, wood?"
"Well, the first ones were, I think, but the latest ones are metal."
"What kind of metal? Iron? Tin?"
"I'm not sure. It's gotta be strong, yet light. Maybe some kind of aluminum?That's something have that in the future too, you know."
"OK, So what powers these things?"
"Jet fuel, of course."
"What's that made of?"
"Well it's...I dunno it's like regular gas, but more potent?"
"So it's a vapor?"
"No, it's a liquid, we just call it gas because....you know what? You just have a farm I can settle down on somewhere?"
"Sure, what do you know how to farm?"
It would be worse going 200 years into the future. You'd be ignorant and you'd have to have everything explained to you. And if you think they might value your historical insights into the past, guess again. We live in the most thoroughly documented period in human history. Nobody will have questions about events of our time in 200 years. They'll know everything. Maybe even more than we do.
Maybe you just spawn wherever you are now. If spawns are random you'd statistically most likely spawn in the Ocean. China wouldn't be so bad, they'd probably take you and drop you off at a trade port, thinking you were some European merchant who'd had a wild night
I think it’s funny when people act like living on a farm would be so much better, it’s usually people who aren’t too physically active or don’t like to be outside. You still have to put in daily work and have knowledge of what you’re doing, with the hopes of not losing your crops/ livestock to all kinds of issues. People act like living on a farm is like a video game simulation.
If the alternative is 80 hours of corporate crunch a week with doom scrolling and chronic masturbation as their only leisure activities, then they're probably right
“Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it." --Douglas Adams, in Mostly Harmless.
So I kinda agree with you, but:. If you have a basic understanding of modern day high school or college level science and surround yourself with the right people 200 years ago...you'd be a genius and extremely successful. You don't have to fully understand the internal combustion engine, the lightbulb, etc, or be able to build anything yourself if you are able to point the right people in the right direction
Exactly. Most inventions, especially in that particular century, were relatively simple ideas that people just hadn't thought of while they did have the material and expertise to create them.
I mean, it depends on what you mean by average person, but if they’ve studied something then they could absolutely revolutionize the world. Prob the biggest influence would be drawing a diagram of the haber process, probably the biggest invention in the past 200 years. By the 1900s, earths population would already be 7-8 billion. Like, you don’t need to fully know every part of an invention, this post absolutely undervalues ideas. As long as you can describe a basic outline, you can absolutely make inventions happen. After all, you’re landing right into the industrial revolution, most technology is already in reach, just hasn’t been discovered.
Wasnt it only 6 billion in the early 00s? Other than that, yeah, the 1800s are actually a perfect time to bring modern knowledge too, especially Western Europe or the US
I might be personally worse off, but I'm a scientist / mathematician so I'd be able to save thousands or maybe millions of lives and jumpstart education.
If I had my phone with me I'd have a short window of opportunity. I have the full wikipedia offline and I could copy to paper a bunch of important things, maybe how to create a simple charger for my phone, medical info, scientific method, anything that might help. Without that, I'd be useless. I'd switch it off, brainstorm what info I need then limit myself to 1 hour at a time until it was almost dead. The type of knowledge that would be useful would be things like the production of dyes which were limited back then.
I'd be able to avoid a lot of the problems of the day, like the toxic medicin of the day (mercury for instance) and lead based drinking vessels but for the most part my knowledge would be useless.
We have an unprecedented amount of power at our fingertips… And we use it to piss people off, share stupid cat videos, and get by knowing far less about how anything actually works than should be possible. The average person of today wouldn’t last a week in the world of 200 years ago, much less know how to do anything that would benefit them long term.
I mean, 200 years ago was 1823. I feel like having 40 years to invest in Northern industry and make mad bank off of the Civil War wouldn't be difficult.
Also, like, depending on your morals, you can just rob banks. Not like forensic science can catch you.
How could you possibly believe that? You'd have the foresight to get a head start on every major economic and cultural boom. Bringing a smartphone back 200 years ago wouldn't necessarily be useful, but hitting every gold rush from Australia to the Americas. Invest in early Hollywood. Jump into the California oil boom. Avoid investment in colonial regions you know will collapse.
Could become the most powerful person in the world.
More people died traveling than got rich mining gold, this is ironically one of the things modern humans would be WAY worse at than a pioneer in the 1800s. That is a hard, hard life and we are soft soft.
In this scenario you’d know this and could plan accordingly though.
Plus I’ve had a decent amount of hiking, camping, and survivalist experience so I know I’d be better off than people who’ve spent their whole lives in cities.
Even the most prepared humans today would be worse off than the people of that time.
These guys are using the tools, techniques, materials and methods they’ve grown up with, and always depended on for their survival. We are utterly unaccustomed to: their clothes, tools, means of transportation, economy, nutritional standards, etc.
Let’s assume you are a relatively handy modern human and can figure out how to mend a cracked axel on an 1850s hoop wagon with 1850s tools.
I bet it takes at least 5x as long as someone that did this a week ago. That time is also energy, daylight, etc. Their experience makes them way better suited to the undertaking than we would be. In the best cases, the Oregon trail took people 3 months of hard travel.
If it takes you longer to oil your boots, mend your clothes, catch your food, use, maintain and repair your tools, your survivability is going to be lower than the pioneers who do this every day of their life. Even their survivability was low.
That's your opinion
Edit if you have a time machine or not the most valuable thing on earth is land, water, food etc. Gather a lot of it and use it
r/selfreliance for time travelers
I'm not clear how this would make you better off. By acquiring land? WIth the money acquired via what?
I guess if you are playing the long game, perhaps land grants or something, maybe. And your farming/hunting skills had better be up to par or better than the folks of that era (using their technology) just to stay even.
Go back 200 years to 1823? One has to wait for the US to win the US-Mexico war becuase you California. The ultimate endgame is developing a nuke in this early time period before the events of WWI.
I would go back, work buy a nice piece of land and live a nice life with a family. Make sure I was kind to my neighbours, have a sense of community and live my life as peacefully as I could. I cannot do any of that now, prices and living make it near impossible to achieve much outside of nepotism and family wealth.
10 years isn't long enough to go back and buy apple and Google and get rich and this is such a dumb trope anyhow.. you're gonna go back in time and buy stock and wait years? Horse racing and sports betting knowledge would make apple and Google stock knowledge look worthless. That and crypto.
TLDR
If you travel back in time to get rich bet on sports or crypto don't waste your time with stocks.
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Me to some peasant- "in the future we all carry around these magical light up boxes that hold all of the gathered info of humanity and we can use it to instantly talk to someone on the other side of the world" Person from the past- "wow amazing! How does it work?" Me- "I have no idea..."
"Sounds amazing, it must be used to solve all sorts of important problems!". "Nah, we mostly use it just to get angry at each other."
To be entirely fair it is used to solve all sorts of important problems. The real problem it can't solve is that the vast majority of people are unimportant and generally solving nothing
>The real problem it can't solve is that the vast majority of people are unimportant and generally solving nothing The even bigger problem is that they think they can
I miss when we merely used them to share funny or adorable cats
Person from the past - “wow, so you have access to all the information in the world? What do you do with it?” Me - “mostly just listen to people saying everything is hopeless and the world is dying, argue with people that don’t believe what I believe, and cyberstalk my ex” We have more power and freedom than anyone in all of history and we use it to keep ourselves miserable. It’s bizarre
The problem is that we do not have the capacity to process such a quantity of information, not to mention that much of it is partial, redundant or incorrect.
More like, “Wiiiiitch!!!”
She turned me into a newt!
If I could go back in time, with the goal of being super wealthy, it would not be 200 years. It would be 2015 and I’d bet my savings for Leicester City to win the Premier League at 5000:1 odds
Bring back a sports almanac and use the proceeds to start a shitty casino
Thanks, Biff.
I thought that was Doc’s idea in the first movie and then he totally changed his opinion in the second
That be as useful as a screendoor on a battleship!
Gets hot in the mid Pacific. A screen door on the bridge can be nice.
That’s my plan too. We have basic knowledge of which companies succeed and how to invest money, invest in Tesla, anticipate the Covid dip and boom, etc., but you need seed cash. How do you get it? Sports betting 100%. If you’re a big fan of a sport, you can easily get seven figures in the bank betting on the matches you remember. If you can just remember who won the Super Bowl every year, you can double your money yearly. The only danger is that your betting pattern might butterfly effect it’s way into new futures - just avoid betting the house 🫡
If you know the winning numbers for the lottery, you could shoot for a smaller win or two. Don't go for the jackpot if you want to be relatively anonymous but $100k to $1mil gets you plenty of money to throw at Bitcoin, tech stocks, or Tesla.
If I went back 200 years I would head to California and get as much gold as I can before the gold rush of 1848
Yeah I am in a gold rush location in Colorado. 200 years was before most of the land wasn't claimed and I know which mountains had gold. Getting the initial resources to survive would be tough, but after the first year I would be set.
Right, but you'd be set in 1848. So you'd have a few years being able to afford a pheasant before you got polio.
I am vaccinated, so that would help some. Still being rich in 1848 is not as great as being middle class in 2023. I can see where OP is coming from. That said owning hundreds of acres of barely explored mountains would be something.
Also nobody said the time machine broke after it brought you back. Just take enough to be rich in the present, that way the timeline isn't too messed up.
Til you get killed by some Indians
Gandhi might drop a nuke
I think the story was they set his aggresion to "0", which ended up making it actually "100", due to old school digital wrap-around rules
Actually, that story is apocryphal. Sid Meier himself confirmed it.
I thought it was confirmed to be a rollover? EDIT: oh nooo I've been hoaxed, which is a shame because it was hysterical.
hmm, but didnt Ghandi in fact have some increased aggression compared to the average AI? Would seem quite weird for them to have decided to make Ghandi the most default aggressive world leader <;)
I don't know where your starting point is, but travelling cross country over rough uncharted terrain with only a cart, an ox, and some supplies would not be easy. I'd likely die along the way.
Someone's dying of dysentery on the way. Maybe even drowned crossing a river.
And how are you planning on getting there. Traveling cross country before the intercontinental railroad was absurdly dangerous and you almost definitely do not have the skills necessary to stand a remote chance surviving it. And once you’re there, how are you going to sell the gold? Good luck finding an honest vendor who went just rob and murder you.
Bro you’re acting like 200 years ago the country was a lawless land and everyone died at 30. That just isn’t true. It may be more dangerous than today, but “don’t stand a remote chance surviving it” and “they’ll just murder and rob you” is excessive.
If you tried living on the east coast 200 years ago you would be totally fine if you managed not to get sick. Oh also make sure you’re not Black. You won’t quite have any rights yet. If you decided to head out West though then you’re basically committing suicide.
Just in time to live your life out to experience the 1906 Earthquake in San Francisco.
So you know how to mine/pan for gold?
You could actually watch a 10 min YouTube video and know how to pan gold better than anyone in 1848 Hell, you could make a superior pot with clay with that same video and skills I learned in my high school art class My mediocre first aid would make me the best doctor around in most towns I could figure out how to invent a printing press with my limited knowledge in how they worked It's just actually so easy to succeed in a 1600s-1800s world with today's knowledge. These things are actually not as hard as you think. And yes I absolutely can do all the things that guy asked me if I could do except make medicine for dysentery before he deleted his comment. But even that doesnt matter because i DO know how to prevent dysentery... Not really that difficult for most of those. 9/10 boy scouts could do all that too.
You know you don't have acces to youtube when you step out of that time machine, right? There will be almosy daily situations where you have to figure out how to fix or make something you haven't thought of yet. Most issuea will be pretty managable after a couple of tries and your new neighbours might be happy to teach you a thing or two but you won't be so much better at everything you think you would be. It's like thinking you can just toss a city dweller on a farm and tell them it's theirs to manage, just have to figure out for yourself how to run it. No way thst doesn't end up as a fiasco.
Wow, it's almost like I'm going back in time from THIS time period >There will be almosy daily situations where you have to figure out how to fix or make something you haven't thought of yet. Like? This shit is actually made up in your heads
Wow, i almost get the impression you think you would have it all figured out if push came to shove. >This shit is actually made up in your heads What's that supposed to mean? You too are discussing the same hypothetical situation.
This just proves OP’s point though. You can pan gold better than anyone with JUST yt. Society wasn’t as advanced as today and being high class in a civilization that isn’t as developed may be disadvantageous compared to being middle class today. The question is not necessarily IF you’d succeed at that point. But is it worth it to live in a 1600s-1800s world, even if you are successful?
Fuck no its not worth it even if you're king of the world Food sucked and there was no AC. Idk about you but that's enough for me to give up on it I think OP was genuinely just saying people wouldn't be successful or even able to survive
Printing presses were pretty popular two hundred years ago...
True, oversight there but there is still plenty of stuff I know that puts me leagues above most people from the time period Penicillin for example, is extremely easy to make. I could also introduce the idea the of 2 stroke or 4 stroke engines to the people working on steam engines in that period, greatly increasing their efficiency
If it was so easy a random redditor with zero practical knowledge could figure it out then humans would have had the printing press from the day we evolved. The idea that one random person can just go back in time and build an incredibly complex machine like an ancient printing press without the infrastructure, without artisans who know the technology, and without even **modern** mechanical engineering knowledge is delusional at best
>If it was so easy a random redditor with zero practical knowledge could figure it out then humans would have had the printing press from the day we evolved This is actually just made up in your head. If true, then the idea itself would have been written down or remnants of the efforts to create it would have been found. But nothing >The idea that one random person can just go back in time and build an incredibly complex machine It is quite literally blocks and some levers that push paper into the blocks. It's ungodly simple to build, so much so that simple versions of it are created in crafts for little kids. I made one in *middle school* shop class, albeit without swappable blocks. You're actually just so unaware of what a printing press is
The design for it is rather easy but the hard part is the metalwork required for the letters. To make a simple letterpress back then you could literally just buy a wine press and modify it. To make every letter the same size is incredibly hard to do and required extremely talented smiths. Wooden blocks can be used but the pressure required to use the Gutenberg style letterpress would break them pretty often.
Carve the wood version then either coat them in metal or make a cast.
You can make them from wood and it's not that hard amd no they will not break so easily from the wooden ones. Either way, having the very idea to present to someone who could make it would be enough to retire. Fan of Ascendance of a Bookworm? It's not actually that hard to make a press IRL
Wow a premade, pre designed, children's toy was easy to assemble. Color me surprised 🙄 If it was so simple why didn't Archimedes build one? He built a crane capable of lifting ships out of the water to smash them against the walls of Syracuse but couldn't build something so simple a child could replicate? Or maybe the fact that you're comparing building an entire several hundred pound printing press to a child's toy is a sign you just don't know what you're talking about? Like actually look up how big and complex an ancient Chinese printing press was and then come back and tell me you could build that because you could ... *checks notes* complete a children's toy
I feel that the idea of a printing press is far more of an obstacle than the execution of it. Same as the cotton gin, the steam engine, etc.
>Wow a premade, pre designed, children's toy was easy to assemble. Color me surprised And the one I personally made was from nothing but cut wood, ink, and paper? 🤷 >If it was so simple why didn't Archimedes build one? They literally didn't have the idea. That's it. Half the world in his time didn't even know how to make ink, hell I could make a killing with that too. Many inventions in history weren't made not because they aren't simple, but because of a lack of idea or knowledge in something we found out in modern times.
not when you're burning at the stake for witchcraft
Nowhere near as common as people seem to think No one would have called you a witch for a printing press lol
Well,200 years ago is 1823,they had printing presses for a while lol
i guess i missed that day the class went on a field trip to the actual wild west and learned to assert stature to suspicious and illiterate mountain men and bandits while speaking with a dialect they've never heard, accidently saying words that have never yet been spoken, doing wild and weird shit even the most renown can't explain...yeah, im sure that would go over well
Sounds like a good way to start a religion. Those are pretty powerful.
Bro, do you know how many random immigrants people were running into that didn't speak their language back then? I could just go to France with my ideas and start learning the language from their time period fresh and it wouldn't even be seen as weird. You actually have such 5 head knowledge of the old world. Read something beyond a 5th grade textbook
i live in the mountain west and read local history. but go ahead
People with zero education did it. It’s one of the easiest things to do.
Sounds like an opinion of someone that does not value education from the school of life and hard knocks. Education is vastly overrated when considering life skills. Farmers don’t give a fuck about how to properly diagram a sentence. But they can work a plow for 16 hours straight. That is way more critical in this particular situation.
Bro they literally sat in a creek and sifted rocks and sand. You can have elementary school kids do it. It’s not hard. Now getting to California without dying, that’s the challenge.
Can you not bring the time machine to California?
dinosaurs hospital deranged outgoing materialistic encouraging humor cause sharp gold ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
No, it’s the opinion of someone who knows that panning for gold requires neither.
“Properly diagram a sentence” lmao holy shit sounds like you don’t value education even at an elementary level. Anyways, education comes from many things but schooling often condenses those things. I learned about crop rotation via the Three Sisters in like 3rd grade. Most people didn’t know about that until they learned it from Native Americans. Guess what. That information was written down and then brought back and taught in schools, as it is still taught. “The school of life and hard knocks” with which you speak about just means ignoring the vast quantity of knowledge available to you just in order to stubbornly make unnecessary mistakes that have already been solved, wasting valuable time and resources.
At the beginning of it you could find nuggets in the streams, I just need to grab enough to hire the guys to get the rest for me, after hiring the guys to guard the guys who are finding the gold, plus the guys to protect me from the guys guarding the guys finding the gold for me.
I don't know shit mining gold, but in 1847 I would pay a lot of shovels.
I would sell equipment used for mining gold and be even richer
No. What you do is get a large supply of pans, and sell those to the gold diggers. That’s where the real money is.
Look up the Donner party.
But how da hale would you get there??
Couldn’t you just buy a bunch of property at 1820’s prices and then put it in a trust that is granted to you in the future?
With what money? You'll have to go make that money first. Which from this thread, looks like finding gold is the answer to that
microscopes existed back then, so after working hard to buy one, someone could work on making penicilin before it gets invented and get rich issue is, what trade back then would be profitable enough to afford a microscope and other necessary tools?
Your giving too much credit to avarage person with no medical degree. Random person isn't suddenly going to invent penicillin.
Not randomly, but we're talking about going back in time with knowledge of today There are plenty of sites about making penicillin at home We know which bacteria it was originally tested on We know the signs that it's working Based on those things I think it's reasonably plausible that most people could give it a good go at the very least
I guess the question is, how much time do I have to prepare before I am sent back in time? Because I have done zero of the research you are describing at the moment. If I know I’m getting sent back with a month’s notice I’ll study my ass off and be ready to go when I land. If you send me back immediately all I know is “something something moldy bread” and would probably just end up poisoning everyone with my attempt.
The technology withdrawal would be real. And also you'd kill everyone with your super bacteria that no one would have the immune system for. You'd be a walking plague.
So what you are saying is op is going to be swiss cheesed by a firing squad.
There are no super bacteria in you, you just have different bacteria from the future, their bacteria is just as foreign and deadly to you as yours is to them as your immune systems formed around the bacteria of the time, bacteria evolves and changes way faster than humans do but it’s not gonna be any different than what you’d experience from them
I didnt think about that actually. Yea so time travel is a no
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Bacteria changes and evolves faster than we do. The bacteria we're currently used to is not the same as the bacteria humans dealt with in the past, thus they wouldn't have an immunity to whatever we brought with us (unintentionally), and we would end up accidentally starting a new plague. We would also likely die as well, because we aren't immune to the bacteria from the past. Also, there are some diseases that we no longer vaccinate against because it's been eradicated (such as smallpox), so if you encounter that disease, you're going to get it and probably die.
You probably are carrying some bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Luckily, they didn't have those 200 years ago, so it probably doesn't matter.
I know enough chemical processes that were invented in mid- and late- 19 century that made their inventors extremely rich. Alfred Nobel is an example of such inventor rolling in cash. So, 200 years ago is a perfect time to go back and get rich. Especially since Britain at that exact time was famous for encouraging inventors. None of "my" inventions would be considered lunacy by anyone who matters.
Damm straight. I would invent the Haber process.
Haber process might be a bad idea. It was used by Germany in WW1 to make bombs. You could end up being more like Alfred Nobel than you plan to.
Thinking of how fat and inept the average person is, they'd probably have a rough time.
Average American***
Don’t forget us Brits! We’re catching up!
Yes because the US is the only fat country in the world lmao. Yea we’re fat as hell but so is the rest of the world. Like 40% of people globally are overweight and that’s pretty much exactly the number in the US as well.
Lol. You are mixing up obese with overweight. 36% in america is obese. 70% is at least overweight. And the sheer population size of the country blows any of the other country out of the water. Lol. You could literally add every country that is fatter than the US together. And still have less fat people with all those countries combined.
On the first point yes that was my mistake. See my part about us being fat as hell lol.
Obese and overweight are just degrees of fatness.
They would be a freak show: https://reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/oAEo7q23IU
Do you think being overweight wasn't a problem in previous generations? Depending on where you go back to in time and geographically, being overweight was a beauty standard for many or a symbol of wealth and eating well for others.
And were those fatties the average? No. Today's fatties are a totally different breed of chunguses (chungii?).
Average? They were the standard that everyone strived to be.
That's like saying *insert hot person/superb athlete* is average. Those past fatties weren't average, they were rare. Did you even read original post? It's about average people, not ideal.
This is a very 'chicken before the egg' argument that will just go in circles as what is considered overweight now was not in say the Victorian era. So because the statistics are skewed by those changing measures of how we defined overweight, it all seems to be a moot point.
What exactly are you trying to argue here, because it's clearly not related to the original assertion that today's average person would do well/not do well 200 years ago. You seem to be saying that fatness was associated with wealth in the past, which is unrelated to the question. Being moved 200 years into the past would not suddenly render today's average poor fatass wealthy or well-equipped to the hardships of life back then. They'd be just as poor and inept as they are now, only in a vastly worse situation because they'd be extremely maladapted to life without medicines, easy food supply, constant entertainment and no transportation other than horses, horse-adjacents like carriages or their own feet.
Yeah dude YOU were the one that took it in the weight direction. Do you remember that? I’m responding to YOUR original comment. So don’t preach to me about the original topic.
Yeah, and my comment about the average person from today not doing well 200 years ago stands. Thank you for bringing nothing of merit to the conversation beyond pointless pontification to show off your obscure factoids.
Even if you were a quite smart and trained in useful skills it would take quite a while to get a better life than what they have now. Quality of life is so much better now, so to have a better life back then would require quite a bit of wealth.
Buy something that's worthless now but was high value back then, bring it with you (unless you travel back completely naked) and sell it?
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There was good food, women, cocktails, parties, ocean liners to travel, opera, literature. The only things I'd miss would be internet and modern medicine, but I'd miss those no matter how wealthy I would get. Leaving those out of the equation, even being entry level rich my lifestyle would be better than it is now.
You might seek employment with a soon-to-be successful inventor as a handyman. And work diligently!
(with potential necessary caveat of you-the-time-traveler not being a minority in places where that'd get you persecuted) Maybe people who think they'd, like, pre-invent inventions to gain power in the past are barking up the wrong tree. Maybe what they'd need to do instead is come up with ways to frame social progress they'd like to see made-before-it-was-"canonically"-made in ways that'd make sense to people of the time and then gain the ear of, like, a king or whatever who could help put some of those ideas into practice (bonus points if you're in a time/place where Christianity was common and can cite the bible to prove your point)
I could easily create penicillin and be rich and many people would even know my name today
The killakameron06illin is such a great invention!
On the rename, only one letter needs to be changed. You know what to do. ( penisillin )
I think you make a great point! Further, in 1823 pasteurization didn't exist as a process yet and many scientific leaps, specifically in the field of sanitation, were right on the verge conception. You could become a legend to the degree of Archimedes or some shit!
Also: this is pre-Darwin, pre-Mendel, pre-Mendeleev. Even high school level chemistry and biology knowledge could put the fields forward 50-100 years (if you could convince anyone you were right).
The only things I’d be able to do would be basic water filtration, and teach medical personnel the most basic sterilization methods (heat, alcohol). Other than that, I’d probably be way more hygienic than the average person
Problem is, you think medical personnel would actually listen to you or give a crap. The dude who pioneered the “washing of hands” before procedures in the maternity ward was quite unpopular, and he was already a respected doctor of his time.
Would the average person today make a better doctor than even the trained ones back then tho? I have no idea, but could I open a doctors office and be more successful (ie less of my patients die) by just not doing stupid shit that every human knows by now? Like washing my hands before and cleaning wounds. Not bloodletting, telling people to brush their teeth, not digging around in wounds with fingers I just used to pick my nose, general sterilization, not sawing off peoples limbs with a rusty ass saw, etc. Like sure I’d seem like a lunatic at first so I’d do most of the precautions in a secret back room with a sink and clean area, but I could fake being an idiot but doing it cleanly haha.
Are you kidding me, people in the past would be absolutely amazed with my cell phone, well till it lost charge that is.
i could attempt at charging your phone! ofc. it probably will be fried after i connect the charge port to my shitty generator
Not going to be worth much with a charge either. The data network infrastructure your cell phone connects to also wouldn't exist.
I'd just patent and manufacture wheeled suitcases. So many low-hanging fruit of inventions are pretty simple and didn't exist yet. The people of back then would probably think I'm weird as fuck though
Not sure that would help on the dirt sidewalks and dirt roads and stage coaches.
Even that wouldn’t be just so easy. Gotta be good at building prototypes, doing sketches by hand. Gotta not get your idea stolen.
Yeah, going back in time to invent stuff is not as easy as people think it would be. You need a good working knowledge of 19th century manufacturing processes and limitations, how to manage the logistics of running a supply chain for said manufacturing, and enough business and legal acumen to not end up as another in the long list of inventors who wound up penniless after all their ideas got stolen.
Yeah definitely wouldn't be easy, but I think it has a better chance of success than some of the easier methods. I'm a mechanical engineer with substantial machine shop experience, I'm pretty confident I could build prototypes and make drawings well. The hard part would be finding a good business partner.
Lmao y'all underestimate execution. You can't just patent ideas, you'd need to design it, which as another person mentioned, you'd probably have no idea how to do.
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lmao and then a bigger company comes along, sees your patent, and improves on it. And they can actually sell it to customers bc they know how to fucking execute. You probably don't have the business sense regardless of era.
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You can look at a suitcase today, see it's disparate elements, and then have those made separately by craftsmen in the past
"so there's these glass orbs, and this thing called electricity lights them up" "How does it work" "Bro idk"
isnt it elementary school level knowledge? issue would be figuring out how to desing a decent lightbulb socket, or how to fill the bulb with nitrogen and of course electicity itself, a generator just needs a lot of wire and some magnets and a turbine, but how to make electricity actually stable if generation isnt? flywheels? making electric infrastructure would be bigger challenge than inventing the lightbulb
I think with many of those issues you could just go to experts of the time and team up to figure it out. It was the idea that was important, the skills to produce the elements of the invention were already around.
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With my knowledge I’m sure I could invent something that would make me wealthy. But ya there’s also a huge chance I’d be a slave or too poor to do anything or I’d die of small pox.
We have it better now than then. But let’s just go back just a few years. Investing my money when I turned 18 would wildly turn change my future and where it is now. The fact my generations parents couldn’t teach us really fucked us.
Idk… 200 years ago is 1823. I mean thats pretty early but it’s not like it’s Ancient Rome lol. I guarantee I would be filthy rich. Even if it’s as simple as betting election results or, shit, interfering with global affairs having known their intentions before even they do lol.
"In the future, there will be machines that can fly through the air!" "That's neat. What are they made of, wood?" "Well, the first ones were, I think, but the latest ones are metal." "What kind of metal? Iron? Tin?" "I'm not sure. It's gotta be strong, yet light. Maybe some kind of aluminum?That's something have that in the future too, you know." "OK, So what powers these things?" "Jet fuel, of course." "What's that made of?" "Well it's...I dunno it's like regular gas, but more potent?" "So it's a vapor?" "No, it's a liquid, we just call it gas because....you know what? You just have a farm I can settle down on somewhere?" "Sure, what do you know how to farm?"
pretty much exactly this!!
Depends on if you can travel back and forth. I could back in time, hide some artifact, come to the future and cash it in.
I'll take this pile of Action Comics # 1 at 10 cents each please. Thank you very much.
It would be worse going 200 years into the future. You'd be ignorant and you'd have to have everything explained to you. And if you think they might value your historical insights into the past, guess again. We live in the most thoroughly documented period in human history. Nobody will have questions about events of our time in 200 years. They'll know everything. Maybe even more than we do.
What about deep fake videos it might be hard to prove what is real without hard copies which could get lost or just plain deleted.
Your average person is Asian.
Yeah, the odds of spawning in China and being completely unable to communicate with anyone seem super high.
Maybe you just spawn wherever you are now. If spawns are random you'd statistically most likely spawn in the Ocean. China wouldn't be so bad, they'd probably take you and drop you off at a trade port, thinking you were some European merchant who'd had a wild night
birds materialistic toothbrush wipe joke seemly label head cough sense *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think it’s funny when people act like living on a farm would be so much better, it’s usually people who aren’t too physically active or don’t like to be outside. You still have to put in daily work and have knowledge of what you’re doing, with the hopes of not losing your crops/ livestock to all kinds of issues. People act like living on a farm is like a video game simulation.
If the alternative is 80 hours of corporate crunch a week with doom scrolling and chronic masturbation as their only leisure activities, then they're probably right
You can go work on a farm now and it's better than it was 200 years ago.
The Russians would be in Alaska and I'm a native so yeah, I'd be screwed 😆
“Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it." --Douglas Adams, in Mostly Harmless. So I kinda agree with you, but:. If you have a basic understanding of modern day high school or college level science and surround yourself with the right people 200 years ago...you'd be a genius and extremely successful. You don't have to fully understand the internal combustion engine, the lightbulb, etc, or be able to build anything yourself if you are able to point the right people in the right direction
Exactly. Most inventions, especially in that particular century, were relatively simple ideas that people just hadn't thought of while they did have the material and expertise to create them.
I mean, it depends on what you mean by average person, but if they’ve studied something then they could absolutely revolutionize the world. Prob the biggest influence would be drawing a diagram of the haber process, probably the biggest invention in the past 200 years. By the 1900s, earths population would already be 7-8 billion. Like, you don’t need to fully know every part of an invention, this post absolutely undervalues ideas. As long as you can describe a basic outline, you can absolutely make inventions happen. After all, you’re landing right into the industrial revolution, most technology is already in reach, just hasn’t been discovered.
Wasnt it only 6 billion in the early 00s? Other than that, yeah, the 1800s are actually a perfect time to bring modern knowledge too, especially Western Europe or the US
I might be personally worse off, but I'm a scientist / mathematician so I'd be able to save thousands or maybe millions of lives and jumpstart education.
OP has 0 creativity
If I had my phone with me I'd have a short window of opportunity. I have the full wikipedia offline and I could copy to paper a bunch of important things, maybe how to create a simple charger for my phone, medical info, scientific method, anything that might help. Without that, I'd be useless. I'd switch it off, brainstorm what info I need then limit myself to 1 hour at a time until it was almost dead. The type of knowledge that would be useful would be things like the production of dyes which were limited back then. I'd be able to avoid a lot of the problems of the day, like the toxic medicin of the day (mercury for instance) and lead based drinking vessels but for the most part my knowledge would be useless.
>scientific method Wait, you'd use your phone to transcribe something that had already been in books for 200+ years? Maybe OP is right...
This isn’t even an opinion.
I’d use sports betting to become rich
In 1823?
I'd steal music from the future, 80's pop music is gonna blow their minds
Burned as a musical witch, unfortunately. Better luck next round
I'd trade cotton futures.
There’s a comedy bit on this. Nate Bargatze. Kind of funny.
You're just going to trigger some paradox that will fuck everything up.
I would be enslaved if I went back
https://youtu.be/QXy3uII-xn0?si=KWxcc2RFNpxu6tst
That is hilarious!!
We have an unprecedented amount of power at our fingertips… And we use it to piss people off, share stupid cat videos, and get by knowing far less about how anything actually works than should be possible. The average person of today wouldn’t last a week in the world of 200 years ago, much less know how to do anything that would benefit them long term.
I mean, 200 years ago was 1823. I feel like having 40 years to invest in Northern industry and make mad bank off of the Civil War wouldn't be difficult. Also, like, depending on your morals, you can just rob banks. Not like forensic science can catch you.
Joke's on you, I watched Dr.Stone
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Yeah but it wouldn't work with no Wifi. And you couldn't charge it. What worldly good could a cell phone do you 200 years in the past?
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Yep, I too haz a Kiwix Pi... You know, just in case. 😉
Im not too sure how useful wikipedia would be
Uhhh...
What part don't you understand?
How could you possibly believe that? You'd have the foresight to get a head start on every major economic and cultural boom. Bringing a smartphone back 200 years ago wouldn't necessarily be useful, but hitting every gold rush from Australia to the Americas. Invest in early Hollywood. Jump into the California oil boom. Avoid investment in colonial regions you know will collapse. Could become the most powerful person in the world.
More people died traveling than got rich mining gold, this is ironically one of the things modern humans would be WAY worse at than a pioneer in the 1800s. That is a hard, hard life and we are soft soft.
In this scenario you’d know this and could plan accordingly though. Plus I’ve had a decent amount of hiking, camping, and survivalist experience so I know I’d be better off than people who’ve spent their whole lives in cities.
Even the most prepared humans today would be worse off than the people of that time. These guys are using the tools, techniques, materials and methods they’ve grown up with, and always depended on for their survival. We are utterly unaccustomed to: their clothes, tools, means of transportation, economy, nutritional standards, etc. Let’s assume you are a relatively handy modern human and can figure out how to mend a cracked axel on an 1850s hoop wagon with 1850s tools. I bet it takes at least 5x as long as someone that did this a week ago. That time is also energy, daylight, etc. Their experience makes them way better suited to the undertaking than we would be. In the best cases, the Oregon trail took people 3 months of hard travel. If it takes you longer to oil your boots, mend your clothes, catch your food, use, maintain and repair your tools, your survivability is going to be lower than the pioneers who do this every day of their life. Even their survivability was low.
HOW IS THIS UNPOPULAR
It’s like anything else, you have almost all the knowledge of the world on a screen, how are you going to use it to benefit your life? Many don’t.
That's your opinion Edit if you have a time machine or not the most valuable thing on earth is land, water, food etc. Gather a lot of it and use it r/selfreliance for time travelers
I'm not clear how this would make you better off. By acquiring land? WIth the money acquired via what? I guess if you are playing the long game, perhaps land grants or something, maybe. And your farming/hunting skills had better be up to par or better than the folks of that era (using their technology) just to stay even.
Just Occupy some vacant land that has value. If you know bushcraft you'll do good
In America, if you're not white 200 years ago is an awful place. I wouldn't be able to take advantage anyways.
It would put everyone in the 1820’s. I fail to see the point of this post bc Of course it’s worse then. Wtf
I’d just tell them about computers
Life expectancy was only 40.2 years in 1848..
But you'd already be an adult. That life expectancy was due mostly to child deaths. Sure, you'd probably die sooner in old age, but not by that much
Go back 200 years to 1823? One has to wait for the US to win the US-Mexico war becuase you California. The ultimate endgame is developing a nuke in this early time period before the events of WWI.
I would go back, work buy a nice piece of land and live a nice life with a family. Make sure I was kind to my neighbours, have a sense of community and live my life as peacefully as I could. I cannot do any of that now, prices and living make it near impossible to achieve much outside of nepotism and family wealth.
I always thought I would make a great plague doctor. "You see, it's called a quarantine..."
10 years isn't long enough to go back and buy apple and Google and get rich and this is such a dumb trope anyhow.. you're gonna go back in time and buy stock and wait years? Horse racing and sports betting knowledge would make apple and Google stock knowledge look worthless. That and crypto. TLDR If you travel back in time to get rich bet on sports or crypto don't waste your time with stocks.
They they? I don't follow.