… if I’d been born into that time, instead of this one...
What exactly does a hypothetical scenario where “person X was born Y years earlier” even look like? I could see a somewhat plausible interpretation of that description in periods of extremely slow scientific and technological progress, but the twentieth century doesn’t qualify.
In the 1920s:
1) The concept of a turing machine hadn’t been formulated yet.
2) There were no electronic computers.
3) ARPANET wasn’t even an idea yet, and wouldn’t be for decades.
4) Television was a novelty, years away from being used by a significant number of people.
5) WW1 was recent history.
Two persons with the same DNA and, except for results of global changes, very similar local environments during their childhood, would most likely turn into completely different adult humans if one of them was born in the 1920s and the other at some point in the last 30 years (roughly chosen to guarantee exposure to the idea of the internet as a teenager), and they both grew up in industrialized countries.
The scientific and technological level one is born into is critical for mind development. What does it mean to consider a hypothetical world where a specific person was born into an environment very different in those respects? Why is this worth thinking about?
I hope the following isn’t completely off-topic:
What exactly does a hypothetical scenario where “person X was born Y years earlier” even look like? I could see a somewhat plausible interpretation of that description in periods of extremely slow scientific and technological progress, but the twentieth century doesn’t qualify. In the 1920s: 1) The concept of a turing machine hadn’t been formulated yet. 2) There were no electronic computers. 3) ARPANET wasn’t even an idea yet, and wouldn’t be for decades. 4) Television was a novelty, years away from being used by a significant number of people. 5) WW1 was recent history.Two persons with the same DNA and, except for results of global changes, very similar local environments during their childhood, would most likely turn into completely different adult humans if one of them was born in the 1920s and the other at some point in the last 30 years (roughly chosen to guarantee exposure to the idea of the internet as a teenager), and they both grew up in industrialized countries. The scientific and technological level one is born into is critical for mind development. What does it mean to consider a hypothetical world where a specific person was born into an environment very different in those respects? Why is this worth thinking about?