Oh yeah. Sometimes I entertain those sorts of “what if” scenarios where, if I were to be transported back to some arbitrary historical time and place, what could I do with what I have to kickstart social/scientific progress.

But underneath every single one of these thought experiments is the ultimate anxiety of “pray you don’t get a bad cut or eat some bad food, then die painfully and horribly of infection or illness.”

There are just substantially fewer safeguards, so you’re at greater risk of everything. Even thinking about having to go to a hospital at the time of my grandparents’ childhood terrifies me. It’s crazy how much medicine has improved just over the past few decades, and has me wondering just how barbaric our own practices today might seem to others in the future.