Imagine you travel back in time and have to explain some modern technology, scientific discovery...

Imagine you travel back in time and have to explain some modern technology, scientific discovery, or social phenomenon to an ancient Greek. But keep in mind you have to explain it in relatable terms so they would understand the concept of it. In other words you'd probably have to simplify and use analogies. And I don't mean 'explain it like you would to a 5 year old'; the goal is to have them comprehend it like an adult would as best you possibly could in a few paragraphs.

For instance, how would you go about explaining computers? Or black holes? Or the internet? Or hipsters? These are just a few, but you could choose anything.

I don't understand any of those things.

Technology would actually be relatively easy to explain, since Greek science was for the most part teleological and not mechanical, so you wouldn't need to explain the specific mechanical structure of the thing but rather the general function it fulfills.

Black Holes I have no idea how to handle, probably along the lines of divine cosmology.

Hipsters is easy since classical civilization was crawling with them.

I'd explain guns in terms of fire and bows

Evolution should be pretty easy to explain even without genetics

not to aristotelians, who think species are eternal and unchanging

Meh i would have just to change their opinion by looking at dog races or something i just think evolution is one of the must relevant theories and probabily one of the easiest to explain

aristotelians are pretty dumb, dude. they'd find a way around it.

>In modern world, we try to not have any wars or killing and we are mostly successfull.
>We have cures for most of the diseases.
>We have enough food to feed the whole planet for decades.
>We have enough means so anybody can live in warm big house.
>Everybody has freedom to be whoever he wants, to do whatever he wants, if he has the means to do it.
>Our world is build around equality and no discrimination.
>The nations are literally ruled by the people.
>We built artificial beings that help us with our daily lives.
>Most of the issues of modern world is dealing with world issues we started before we became like this, or protecting green life around globe.
>And the best part is that people are still unsatisfied.

>>In modern world, we try to not have any wars or killing and we are mostly successfull.

*Only in first world countries

wew lad

Electromagnetism
Love and Strife, along the lines of Empedocles.

Electronics
Love circuits, allowing the flow of subtle fire particles

Internet
Aetheric love circuits

Black holes
Holes in the veil separating this world from Hades, forming whirlwinds in the aether.

Hipsters
Ignoble, intemperate men

Socialism
Plato already explained it. He called it democracy, that is mob rule leading to tyranny.

>The nations are literally ruled by the people.
How is this inherently good? The masses are foolish and make mistakes all the time

It's also not even true

You realise that any expert can explain their profession to any level right?

Let's take the internet for instance, say Plato n' I can both speak modern English.

Plato, the internet is a man-made development beyond comparison. We have developed a way to mould light and sound. They can consist of any combination of light and sound you could imagine and more beyond that. These creations, much like our thoughts, are so immaterial that we are able to speed them around the world through reflections of light and sound. Because they travel through light and sound they are incredibly fast.

It is this network of light and sound sending these constructs that we call the internet. How this is done leads to the more complex area of computers, networks and electrical engineering.

>Computers
Modern version of vases with pornographic illustrations

>Black Holes
The product of Jewish lies.

>Internet
A library whose books contain mostly porn.

>hipsters
Pythagoreans.

Actually you can explain almost everything ust with Pre-Socratic Physics. In Democritus and Leucippus you have atoms and vaccum which form the basic stuff of the universe. In Empedocles you have Love and Strife that account for the Physical forces (gravity, electromagnetism, etc.) and Darwinian evolution (he said that complex organisms were formed by Love and Strife with trial and error until a more stable form was reached). And with, again Empedocles, but especially Pythagoras you have mathematics and energy (the soul, which they held to be immaterial, eternal and recyclable).

Well yeah obviously i was refering to 1st world countries. You don't describe progress of the world by pointing at aboriginal mudhuts

>weeaboos

losers who obsess over persian art and language.
lament their greek heritage, wishing to be aryan instead.
follow zoroastrian code 100%.
hope to live in persepolis one day where they will serve in the great fire temple, or perhaps at the shahanshah's palace.

>ugh its called the FARAVAHAR, dad. it's NOT from lydia and its NOT barbaric

A computer is a sort of automated abacus. Using electricity, which is the flow of the "atomic", as democritus, fundamental particle called the electron, the current is modified by very small mechanisms without moving parts into doing tasks, such as mathematical operations, storing information, or emitting sound and light. These devices are complex enough that they can run incredibly mathematically complex programs, and at a speed of billions of simple operations every second. The inner workings of a computer is too complex for human eyes, so you connect to it a screen. The computer is designed to have a way of sending electron flow in specific patterns to this screen, and the screen has a billion little spots of light, which shine with green, red or blue light. The electron flow tells the screen in which pattern each spot should shine, and if you vary the strength of each colored dot, you can produce any color in the world, white light being an equal combination of all these colors. Thus by this mechanism you can relay important information from the computer to the user, and the user also has a board with pressure-sensitive squares with letters and numbers on them, using this device and some others the user can input commands into the computer, which are interpreted in a myriad of ways.

Computers can also be connected to each other by cables carrying the electron flow, creating a world-spanning web of various kinds of computers called "the internet". Using this, you can gather and send information to and from other computers, being able to connect to thousands of libraries, converse with people on the other side of the world as you would converse mouth-to-mouth (but it is often a much fainter representation than the man in person), do business with anyone, listen to any form of music, see any form of art, look at the light and sound captured from other places of the world, and any number of inanities. They are affordable by every man.

/autism

I don't think that was even applicable, what the fuck did some random greek kids know about persia other than that they were an enemy? It's not like they had internet.

Assuming you just woke up in a haystack or something in ancient athens in your normal clothes, with no knowledge of the language unless you actually know it, what the fuck could you do to not get killed? I assume you would get detected, then captured because you look like a barbarian with your foreigner look and pants, then what? Draw mathematics in the sand until someone respectable comes along?

There were barbarians who came to study in Athens. I would imagine that if you made signs of peace, and if led to an official of some kind to explain yourself, you could demonstrate knowledge of mathematics and writing. I think that would qualify you as "learned" at the time, so I doubt they'd mob you like Frankenstein's Monster just because you're wearing some blue jeans. I think you'd probably seem curious enough that Athenians would probably keep you around.

Would they shit their pants if you held up your iphone? What did the ancient greeks believe about witchcraft and sorcery?

>pants
I meant togas

>togas
you mean chitons

>We built artificial beings that help us with our daily lives.
Not that difficult. They had slaves, and some greek thinkers believed that soon, hey would have statue automatons that would do all the work.

>Hello, Mister. I spend my days drawing a specific type of frog and reading and writing meta-language words in a lydian cave painting board. Day after day.

>you could demonstrate knowledge of mathematics and writing
How would you actually do that, though? I mean, you could draw a right-triangle in the dirt with each side attached to a square and possibly other geometrical things but in general it would seem difficult.

Draw a right triangle, then use dots or marks to indicate 3-4-5 for the different sides. Draw figures of the platonic solids. I think arithmetic wouldn't be good enough, since any shepherd's son should be able to do the kind of simple arithmetic you'd be able to demonstrate. Geometry would probably work best. Diagram how to find the circumference of a circle with pi. As long as you seem peaceful and somewhat intelligent I can't imagine they'd kill you. Might throw you out of the city, though.

Draw the 1234567890 numbers, and put the same number of dots or whatever next to them, demonstrate the simple mathematical operators like +-=*/^sqrt() and the base 10 system, then draw the pythagorean triangle with the squares and write it as a^2=b^2 + c^2 or something like that. I mean it should be beyond what some random peasant knew.

>you will never be the host for famous greeks who accidentally traveled through time
>you will never ride the train and have socrates hassle strangers over the concept of virtue
>you will never take them to a modern library
>you will never feed them potato

That's not explaining anything, you're just lying.