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Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 9:53amSanction this postReply
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I went with the summer of '68. "Well-off" in the age before modern medicine and other modern technology isn't such a great option, unless dying young of an incurable disease appeals to you. And Shanghai 2009, while better technology-wise than '68 -- well, you'd still be living in an authoritarian Communist country. Make it "incredibly wealthy" instead of "well-off" and then I'd consider Shanghai.

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Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 10:44amSanction this postReply
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That was my sentiment, too.....

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Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 4:05pmSanction this postReply
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Didn't you get laid the first time around, Robert?


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Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 4:47pmSanction this postReply
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I concur with Jim and Robert.  I was tempted at Shanghai -- If I could be miraculously transported there right now, I would go into business as a technical writer, creating documentation for Chinese products for the American markets -- How to Assemble, Care & Maintenance, as well as any other written communications targeted to Americans.  It was tempting...

But then I thought of living in a 1000-year old city with 20 million people...  Disease is my first worry.  As Jim said, you might show up healthy, but, how would you stay that way?

Those same concerns nixed Florence, even Revolutionary America with its smelly people, filthy cities, savages and Native Americans...  Philadelphia suffered from repeated typhus outbreaks.  ...  Sorry, I can't...  Victorian England was possible.  It would not have to be London.  I could live in the country, exchange letters with famous people, like Darwin and Spencer, Conan Doyle, heck, even Marx -- "Look here, old man..." --  I could invest in Marconi! ...  and Edison!! ...   But, then, what?...  More unwashed masses, cities full of horses.

If I were sent back to 1968, even at my present age of 60, I would have the advantage of foreknowledge, in a society much like my own, with nominally equivalent medical technology (which I never needed back then, anyway), as well as the comforts and pleasures of the 60s, 70s,... maybe even most of the 80s...  A wise, old man, hippest and happeningest... At my present skill level, I'd be The Main Man of Libertarianism.  Instantly.  My books would eclipse Rothbard and I could even be a counterweight to Ayn Rand.  I am 60.  I speak well in front of audiences.  I've been on TV and radio.  From 1968, I would invest immediately in IBM and then DEC and DG... and Apple and Microsoft...  I'd buy a '57 Chevy and a 65 Mustang and put them in a garage with a long lease...  I could work at a dozen different jobs with what I know.  I'd be accepted as a person of inherent social capital just by my bearing and demeanor. 

The run-up in precious metals to 1980 would be real thrill to reexperience, especially with the earnings from my Silicon Valley consultancy.

(By the way, the phrase "Alexandrian Athens" seems misleading.  Do you mean Athens of the mid-300s BCE, c 330 BCE, the time of Alexander the Great?  It was a dump by then.  The so-called Golden Age was from 480-450.  ... even then, it was no place for a foreigner...)


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Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 4:53pmSanction this postReply
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Michael Faraday, James Maxwell....
Healthy and well off in Victorian England would be interesting.

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Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 6:27pmSanction this postReply
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Funny that our "striker" anarchists are germophobe coward Hughses.

Haven't they ever heard of the benevolent universe premise? Haven't they read Rand's deconstruction of Rawls and the impropriety of always assuming the worst? (Philosophy, Who Needs It?) Offered the sense of life choice to travel whenever they like, they choose the summer of '68, not because it's interesting, but because they might eventually get sick? A wonder they ever leave their beds.



(Edited by Ted Keer on 5/30, 9:49pm)

(Edited by Ted Keer on 5/30, 9:50pm)


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Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 9:46pmSanction this postReply
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Right on, Ted. Right on.

When I first saw this poll I thought I would like to go back as far as possible, to see how men really behaved and what life was like for those like Aristotle or Nearchus or Archimedes. To actually be there, to feel the air on my body and the sun on my head, to see, right before me, the same things that they saw and hear the same as they heard.

But then I thought about living in the time of the American Revolution. How interesting would it be to see the actual men who wrote out country into existence. To see the same men fight, die, think, and live for a new way.

However, to go back a few decades to see life in the late sixties...I can't imagine anything more depressing. To see the "Greatest" generation rushing as fast as it can toward servitude? To see their children turn to drugs, sex, and blank fog rather than use their minds? No, I have no interest in seeing that.

I guess I would rather take my chances with an ancient disease which attacks my body - so that I might see a whole new world being formed - rather than stay in the modern era to escape a physical disease only to see the world being slowly killed by an infection of the mind.

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Sunday, May 31, 2009 - 4:46pmSanction this postReply
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If it was a two-way ticket, then one of the ancient civilizations would be worth a visit, since I could bail out if my life was threatened by disease or whatnot. But, seeing as how it's a one-way ticket, none of these options beats being well-off and living near the beach in Hawaii in 2009 -- my current life.

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Sunday, May 31, 2009 - 6:40pmSanction this postReply
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Jim at first briefly, then I later at length, stated pros and cons and the reasons for our selection from the short list of available alternatives. 

I am completing my review of The Man Who Found the Money about railroad financier John Stewart Kennedy.  That time and place -- St. Paul, Minnesota, 1879 - 1890 -- was not offered to us.  It might not have been a bad alternative, all things considered, to see the construction of the railroads, the infrastructure, the finance. It would be like living Atlas Shrugged.  And I could argue for full and consistent laissez faire.  But, as Jim noted, it is a one-way ride.  And in 1968, I could do the same thing.  You don't know how much you can change history until you try.

Also, being somewhat older, those of us who lived as adults in 1968 probably remember the Twilight Zone stories... one about a guy who was fed up with the modern world and wanted to back to a simpler time, like 1870.  There is no better time.  Certainly not in the past.

So, why was the future not offered?  Certainly Dr. Who travels in all directions in all dimensions.

Q: How far into the future would you like to be transported for the rest of your life... remember that you have to adjust to language and other customs, so 10,000 years or even 1000 might be too much...  100?  200?...  Would you live on Earth? 

 If you could live off Earth, where would you go? 
  • Would you like to travel in interstellar space at less than the speed of light?
  • Would you orbit the Sun closer or farther away?
  • Mine the asteroids?
  • Harvest methane on Titan?
  • Colonize Europa or Ganymede?
  • Ride around the Oort Cloud?
  • Maybe something nice, like Mars or Luna?
  • Orbit the sun 90-degrees "up and down" at right angles to the plane of the planets?
  • Interstellar with a light sail, you might make Alpha Centauri in a lifetime ... no telling what's out there... or how long that lifetime might be... freed from gravity... linked to the ship, your mind and its body, an intersteller "cell."
Ahhh... but the Good Doctor's imagination is limited to Florence, and Victorian England.  (Of course then, you could meet Sigmund Freud who would explain to you why you seek to return to the womb.)


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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - 5:36amSanction this postReply
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If I was much older, and thus had a much shorter life expectancy, then a one-way ticket to one of the ancient civilizations would have much greater appeal. The opportunity to explore a drastically different civilization would then outweigh the risk of shaving an average of a year or two off an average life expectancy of considerably less than a decade.

Since the poll question doesn't posit any new capabilities on one's part -- that, presumably, one would be dropped into that culture as is, to sink or swim -- the non-English speaking alternatives might be problematic. Many of those cultures would harshly treat someone who didn't blend in immediately. Being executed as a spy isn't my idea of a good time.

As for Michael's positing future alternatives, if the same criteria is used -- one would be dropped into the culture to sink or swim, with no briefing on how things work or language immersion classes -- I would suspect that perhaps 100 to 200 years would be about the limit to where one might be expected to quickly assimilate into the drastically changed culture rapidly enough to avoid running afoul of deadly governmental or cultural or technological misunderstandings, and to be able to converse well enough with the natives of one's new surroundings, assuming any English-derived languages are still spoken then.

Even these time frames might be on the high end, what with the exponential pace of technological change, and a similar acceleration in the rate of change of the English language. I mean, have you tried to read Shakespeare recently, or the King James version of the Bible?

Or imagine dropping an average Englishman from Shakespeare's time into New York City -- odds are he or she would get run over by a car, or suffer some other deadly mishap in that frantic initial acclimation period, and be barely able to understand what anyone was saying.

Similarly, someone who supported the colonial side in the American Revolution would likely be appalled and bewildered at the authoritarian government he or she encountered.

Basically, newborn babies have a long period to adjust to their new culture and environment, with people cutting them all kinds of slack. Adults dropped into a bewilderingly different society wouldn't get quite the same forebearance. Behavior that gets a child a scolding could result in a felony conviction in an adult.

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