>>That last one seems like it'd be a really big caveat but you're *good* at these plans and I want to here what you have to say. I'm gonna take a stab and guess that smallpox vaccines will be involved?<<
:D
God, I saw a *T-shirt* once on some online store, with the front covered in tips for what things to kickstart if you found yourself permanently trapped in the past and didn't care about trying to preserve the original future. (The (presumably joking) idea was that you should wear the T-shirt so that you'd have it on you in the event of getting sucked into a temporal anomaly.) Vaccination was definitely on that list: even if you don't have any vaccinia virus on hand (because they're assuming you didn't have a chance to prepare), straight-up cowpox is a huge improvement over smallpox, and even variolation is an improvement if you can't get cowpox either.
(Note: if *that* store link breaks too, the Wayback capture won't be good enough because it can't switch to the closeup on the text: check out this poster version instead.))
Anyway: that guide doesn't go into how to convince the people around you to adopt your ideas, so it can't be where I heard the one "If you try to tell people about boiling water to kill germs, you will sound insane. Instead, introduce your new homeland to tea: convince them to boil water because it's *tasty* and the health benefits will follow."
As for things other than germ reduction, I hear that artificial nitrogen fixation (to mass-produce fertilizer) was one of the main sticking points in developing a more prosperous civilization: there's probably some interesting stuff to be done there. I'd have to do a bunch more research to figure out what importing the Haber-Bosch process to the past would look like, which prerequisites you'd need (apparently the reactor needs to be able to create/withstand pretty high pressures, so we'll likely need to work on that for one thing).
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>>this does mean that you're in the eye of history a lot more though, but such is the price of trying to obtain personal power through "right place, right time"<<
I doubt I could pull it off: it seems like it would require a lot of fluent lying and general thinking-on-your-feet. While I do think fairly *well* (thanks!), I do *not* think *quickly*, and all too often I find myself with insufficient mental bandwidth to keep up with a fast-paced situation.
(I don't know whether I'd want a *qualitative* intelligence augmentation--thinking *better* thoughts seems like it could have weird identity issues, best to (at minimum) have someone else go first--but I would absolutely love a *quantitative* intelligence augmentation, to be able to think the *same* thoughts *faster*.
Hmm. Does caffeine do that? I wouldn't want to become *dependent* on caffeine, but it might be worth taking on occasion depending on how I react to it. I keep meaning to try it out and then not getting around to it.)
Whereas the bitcoin thing seems like it would require very little of talking anybody into anything: maybe "hi, yes, I would like to buy some computers and a hotel room in cash that totally doesn't have ten more years of wear-and-tear on it than you'd expect from its issue dates". (And if you kick the starting-funds problem back a step--sell old jewellery† to a [pawn shop]/[scrap-metal merchant] for local currency?--that conversation could get even less tricky.)
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*rereading comment before finalising the draft* Wait, hang on, take a *stab* at vaccines being involved. I get the joke now! (A joke you may or may not have intended!)
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†At least a decade old: there's no reason to take the risk of it getting recycled into itself and causing an infinite-aging-loop paradox.
no subject
:D
God, I saw a *T-shirt* once on some online store, with the front covered in tips for what things to kickstart if you found yourself permanently trapped in the past and didn't care about trying to preserve the original future. (The (presumably joking) idea was that you should wear the T-shirt so that you'd have it on you in the event of getting sucked into a temporal anomaly.) Vaccination was definitely on that list: even if you don't have any vaccinia virus on hand (because they're assuming you didn't have a chance to prepare), straight-up cowpox is a huge improvement over smallpox, and even variolation is an improvement if you can't get cowpox either.
Last time I was telling someone about that shirt I couldn't find the link, but let me try again...oh hey, here it is! (Apparently the tricks were to include the phrase "take the credit" (which I remembered word-for-word) *and* dig as far as result #20, well after the results *seem* to stop being remotely relevant. That gets you a post talking about it with a blurry image and a broken buy link, but the store they link to *does* still carry it if you try the search function.
(Note: if *that* store link breaks too, the Wayback capture won't be good enough because it can't switch to the closeup on the text: check out this poster version instead.))
Anyway: that guide doesn't go into how to convince the people around you to adopt your ideas, so it can't be where I heard the one "If you try to tell people about boiling water to kill germs, you will sound insane. Instead, introduce your new homeland to tea: convince them to boil water because it's *tasty* and the health benefits will follow."
As for things other than germ reduction, I hear that artificial nitrogen fixation (to mass-produce fertilizer) was one of the main sticking points in developing a more prosperous civilization: there's probably some interesting stuff to be done there. I'd have to do a bunch more research to figure out what importing the Haber-Bosch process to the past would look like, which prerequisites you'd need (apparently the reactor needs to be able to create/withstand pretty high pressures, so we'll likely need to work on that for one thing).
---
>>this does mean that you're in the eye of history a lot more though, but such is the price of trying to obtain personal power through "right place, right time"<<
I doubt I could pull it off: it seems like it would require a lot of fluent lying and general thinking-on-your-feet. While I do think fairly *well* (thanks!), I do *not* think *quickly*, and all too often I find myself with insufficient mental bandwidth to keep up with a fast-paced situation.
(I don't know whether I'd want a *qualitative* intelligence augmentation--thinking *better* thoughts seems like it could have weird identity issues, best to (at minimum) have someone else go first--but I would absolutely love a *quantitative* intelligence augmentation, to be able to think the *same* thoughts *faster*.
Hmm. Does caffeine do that? I wouldn't want to become *dependent* on caffeine, but it might be worth taking on occasion depending on how I react to it. I keep meaning to try it out and then not getting around to it.)
Whereas the bitcoin thing seems like it would require very little of talking anybody into anything: maybe "hi, yes, I would like to buy some computers and a hotel room in cash that totally doesn't have ten more years of wear-and-tear on it than you'd expect from its issue dates". (And if you kick the starting-funds problem back a step--sell old jewellery† to a [pawn shop]/[scrap-metal merchant] for local currency?--that conversation could get even less tricky.)
---
*rereading comment before finalising the draft* Wait, hang on, take a *stab* at vaccines being involved. I get the joke now! (A joke you may or may not have intended!)
---
†At least a decade old: there's no reason to take the risk of it getting recycled into itself and causing an infinite-aging-loop paradox.