• Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    I’m pretty sure there was research done that showed that people who are hypothetically transported back in time, won’t be able to make any meaningful contributions to the era they go to. They will just end up integrating in that the society of that era.

    Basically if you go back in time to medieval Europe, you could introduce something like paperclips to society, but you won’t be able to introduce things like computers even if you know how they work and how to use them.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      22 hours ago

      For a really easy demonstration of why, look at videos of WW2 era production machinery.

      They are often amazingly, fascinatingly complex masterpieces of engineering that are still the result of generations of combined mechanical effort and discovery, and what we have now is as far above them as they are above a printing press. And building them required complex tools built by other, slightly less complex tools, you’re not going right from anvil and hammer to a T-model production line.

      You might be able to start the scientific revolution early and introduce key concepts but you do not know how to build even a 19th century cannery, much less a computer, and the team of engineers it would take to do it doesn’t exist either.