Albatross effect poll

For my first posting, let me postulate something between the
butterfly effect (someone farts) and the thunderbird effect
(global bionuclear war). Call it the albatross effect. Let's say
that in 1976 I am involved in an automobile accident that
damages my brain such that I have less control over my temper
and am very violent. Note that having this occur to Bill
Clinton would obviously alter history...I, however, am a
tiny cog in the machine of society. Note also that alterations
could continue for decades, much as my Cleaveland butterfly
effect example.
Obviously, I get in a lot more fights. Say in 1980, one is
bad enough to put both of us in the hospital for a few weeks.
I would likely "get off" this time, if I know the legal system.
In 1983 I get in another double hospital fight. I assume that
this time I end up in an institution, either an asylum or a prison.
Assume that both versions of me live until 2046 and neither marries
nor sires a child (accurate so far for OTL).
My life has had massive change. The lives of a dozen people
(near family members, for example) have had major change. The lives
of my present coworkers, and the two guys I put in the hospital, etc.,
have had moderate change...probably numbering in the hundreds
of people if you put them all together. The lives of thousands
of people have had minor change, and tens if not scores of
thousands have had minute (butterfly level) changes. And this
goes on for 70 years.
Given that only about one person in a million of the world's
population has probably ever heard my name, how different is
the ATL of 2046 compared to OTL in 2046?
 
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It depends on where you're looking at it from. If you're looking at it from the perspective of someone in your family, a lot will have changed. If you're looking at it from my perspective, not much will have changed. Now, this doesn't mean that things won't change. It just means that in the time that insufficient time has passed for the changes to make themselves known. A change like that might take a century or two to become noticable. My guess is that the more radical the change, the quicker the divergence. If the change is small enough, using your example of a fart, the change may never come to light. That's my thought, at least.
 
...but what comes next?

I think that it's still either the convergence model or the butterfly model at work here, depending on what happens down the line.

The thing about the butterfly model is that any change will inevitably spin out farther and farther, eventually leading to massive change (mathematically speaking, probability of difference between any two matching points in OTL vs. ATL is ~1, or approaching absolutely certain). How long it takes, of course, is a matter of chance and original significance of the POD. As Amerigo pointed out, the POD might have been so insignificant that the world will be sucked into the Sun before we see any real difference between OTL and ATL. But at each stage, the OTL and ATL will be moving apart from eachother, and eventually the two will be completely different, no matter how small the POD.

On the other side, you have convergence theory, where all the threads will inevitably "converge" and iron out in the Grand Scheme of Things (the same probability of is ~0, or approaching absolutely impossible). Again, the time it takes for the convergence is a matter of chance and significance of the POD, but according to the model, it will happen eventually. Afterwards, OTL and ATL will be the same forever -- or, as before, Earth will have been sucked into the Sun before the convergence -- no matter how large the POD.

So really, there's no room for a middle ground. If you're saying that the butterfly effect moves forward for a certain length of time (in your example, your lifetime and those of your close friends and relatives) and then ceases to butterfly outwards, as you seem to be saying, I don't really see it as different from convergence theory. For the people involved directly, the difference between ATL and OTL is dramatically different, but eventually, the machinery of the world will grind out any possible impact that change could have made. That is, OTL and ATL will converge at some point in the future, and the most your car accident will change is a table in a statistic book.

I guess what I'm saying is that such a short timeframe is irrelevant as a test for any AH model one might propose. You need to take it to the end of the universe/world/humanity, which for the sake of any theoretical argument is roughly infinity years away. And once you remove a set time-frame from the picture, as you must, you can only migrate the probability of absolute change towards ~0 or ~1. I just don't see how it could stabilize to any other place.
 
Chaos theory demands that any sort of POD will create a different world, as the Earth, and especially people, are not linear systems. That is to say, they don't behave in predictable ways. Going back to the fart example, in one instance the same person that is offended by the passing of gas and makes a comment may, in another instance, not notice the gas, or not be sufficiently offended to make a comment. In some TLs, I'm sure that the even would not make a noticable change, but since you're talking about a literal infinity of alternate universes, there will be an infinity of universes where no change happens, an infinity where someone dies down the line because of the fart, and an infinity where the world is destroyed down the line as a consequence of a fart. With an infinity of alternate universes, all possibilities exist infinitely. Even the ones we don't find plausable or palatable.
 

Straha

Banned
good I beleive that so I put historical figures in my ATLs because itsn ot like the world will be unrecognizable a century or so after the POD
 

HelloLegend

Banned
the changes are staggering due to the time elapsed.
some changes are very minor or have no effect, whether or not i smiled into the rearview mirror while driving down a lonely highway.
other small changes have major effects... while looking at my funny faces in the rear view mirror, my car accidentially hit a cat, or in dodging the cat, my car hits another car and 3000 years from now, the Controller of Skydome One is not Lepesta Duffinaten but instead Moganta Absensole because Lepesta doesn't exist cause I have accidentally erased her ancestor from history. again, I don't believe that everything has a butterfly effect, but some seemly little things do have a tremendous effect later on down the line.
 

Darkest

Banned
The Butterfly Effect is a way to create numerous multiple PODs, all derived from one source. As a writer of an ATL, you can simply assume different changes to events around the world, thanks to the butterfly effect from earlier minute changes.

With one change, everything becomes different. Thought patterns are changed. What you are thinking affects what you do. What you do affects what other people think. What other people think affects what they do. What other people do affects how other people think.

Its going to spread, on and on, through every sort of stimulus. In today's world, it could take days to change everything on the planet from OTL. However, some areas are shielded. If there is no stimulus to transfer through, the change does not happen. If you have a POD on North America before 1492, then you would be plausible to say that the Old World stays the same until 1492. If you have a POD before 2036, then you can count on the aliens to be the same when they arrive in 2036 as OTL, until they witness ATL humans.

You aren't a cog in society. It doesn't matter if its a major POD... eventually, something is going to happen due to your actions that will get noticed. The President has a slightly different opinion, making a different motion than OTL. Or maybe a few soldiers don't advance when they should have, and die, thanks to a misplaced thought. If you seal yourself up in an airtight room, taking in the same amount of water, air, and food every single day... then your actions may not account for anything... until you get out.
 
Depends strongly on luck from a world wide perspective if things are noticable.
You could well end up picking a fight with someone who will go on to become a big buisnessman or something.
Assuming not though then I'd guess effects would be restricted to your immediate area and I would notice little difference, as time goes on the effects would become more pronounced however and in 100 years the ripple will have made the world very different.
 
Darkest said:
Its going to spread, on and on, through every sort of stimulus. In today's world, it could take days to change everything on the planet from OTL. However, some areas are shielded. If there is no stimulus to transfer through, the change does not happen. If you have a POD on North America before 1492, then you would be plausible to say that the Old World stays the same until 1492. If you have a POD before 2036, then you can count on the aliens to be the same when they arrive in 2036 as OTL, until they witness ATL humans.

I thought the butterfly effect spreads throughout the universe so that no area is shielded, even far away areas. So, if I were to do anything, even extremely tiny, like breathe in a different direction, the air molecules will hit other molecules and others, and others etc. so the entire universe has to be changed. That's why time travel wouldn't be possible without any butterflies, you can't help but change even the slightest vibration of an atom or molecule something will bound to happen, it was just get bigger and bigger over time. If billions of years ago, an atom was moved a nanometer away from where it was supposed to be, the butterfly could be so huge that its unrecognizable, life as we know wouldn't have evolved and say, a plasma lifeform on a distant galaxy could be having this discussion instead.
 

HelloLegend

Banned
Darkest said:
You aren't a cog in society. It doesn't matter if its a major POD... eventually, something is going to happen due to your actions that will get noticed. The President has a slightly different opinion, making a different motion than OTL. Or maybe a few soldiers don't advance when they should have, and die, thanks to a misplaced thought. If you seal yourself up in an airtight room, taking in the same amount of water, air, and food every single day... then your actions may not account for anything... until you get out.

I agree, in my personal life, my stepfather was 50/50 on taking a job near Boston Massachusetts in 1987. Due to my meeting of my best friend that year and influencing my best friend to become a flight attendant in 1995, my best friend died in 2002 (not on a flight, but my best friend would not have been in that particular car accident)...

Hence my stepdad's decision to accept the job offer in Massachusetts changes history in a significant way due to the fact that best friend's great times 14 ... grandson would have become Ruler of New Wisconsin nation in 2348. But he is never born due to the fact that my Best Friend's son is never born either to have a kid, to have a kid.. etc.

I don't know about future relatives, but the story of my Best Friend dying due to meeting me is probably true. Even if my best friend had the desire to become a flight attendant had we not met at all. My Best Friend might not have gone to work for that airline in 1995, but instead, he came up with idea in 1997 and was hired by some other airline, hence again avoiding the car accident in 2002.

By the way, this is true story.
I have felt guilty in a way due to my knowledge that had I never met
my best friend, my best friend might still be alive today.
 
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NapoleonXIV

Banned
I don't believe in all this butterfly effect stuff. Mind you, things do have effects on each other, yes, but I think it's like ripples in a pond. When you throw a pebble in the splash is big and anything close by is affected, at a distance little is effected and farther still there is no affect at all. Over time the effect is less and less and eventually dies out altogether.

I can't for the life of me understand how the idea that the affects build over time comes from chaos theory. Chaos theory seems to say the exact opposite. You can't tell or predict very tiny effects, like which side of your hand a water droplet will flow down if it is poured on the edge (a la Jeff Goldblum), or how individual molecules will move within a room containing trillions of them, so small effects are swallowed up in the statistical plentitude; and since big events are made up of a plethora of small ones everything that happens will have limited effect, becoming less and less over time.
 
If it's put sure that the changes are restricted to a closed system that doesn't interact at all with the rest of the world, then you're right. However, even in your example, the air over the pond is influenced, and will slowly spread the butterfly effect over all the world.
 
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