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Comment on If I snapped you back in time 650 years right this very second, how would you use your current knowledge to succeed?

Tudsamfa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

This is something I often wonder about, what could one person even do with all of today’s common knowledge? You can’t very well just invent the printing press and have the same impact as Gutenberg - you need something what the few people who can read would, and most people can’t translate the bible from Latin into renaissance German and/or don’t know enough about the catholic church to write scathing remarks on it like Luther.

You can write and read - that’s something. Maybe more importantly, you can do math with arabic numerals - boom, easy accounting job. With a bit higher education, you may even just invent calculus once more. You know how long it took for people to figure out you can put pi on the number line? Proving all the formulas in your head is the hard stuff, but you have a head start just by knowing them. We all clown on the wormhole explanation with the paper, but it does prove Euclid wrong 400 years early.

Ah, and you can just become a medical genius by using soap and bandages - “do no harm” is better than most.

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Kookie215@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Heres the thing though, you can write, but can you write and read Middle English from the 1300’s? There are some similar words but its a very different language than what you and I are used to, it’s another 200 years before Shakespeare and most English speakers struggle with even as far back as that.

I just asked AI to write my above comment in Middle English

“Lo! Her is the thinge, but thou mayst writen, canstow yet writen and reden in the Englissh of the thrittene hundred yere? Certes, ther ben som wordes ylich, but it is ful divers from that which thou and I ben y-used to. Two hundred wynters yet moot passen er Shakspere shal come, and fele folk that speken now Englyssh han gret strif to undirstanden that tyme.”

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- EtnaAtsume@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Even that is very modern-looking to this Chaucer enjoyer.
  
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- Tudsamfa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  You probably can read middle English sooner than you can speak it. Like writing with a feather on parchment, I assume you don’t just die and have time to learn.
  
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- ReiRose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Side note, I now want to translate all my emails to my supervisors into middle English
  
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- robador51@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  That reads like Dutch to me. Perfect! I’ll be fine.
  
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Tudsamfa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Should be noted though, even with the best plan, your frail body, weird language and no local knowledge will mean you probably still die in 2 - 72 hours.

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