How quickly does the butterfly effect work?

How quickly does the butterfly effect work?

  • Killing a butterfly yesterday should do the trick.

    Votes: 16 28.6%
  • Kill a butterfly a year ago.

    Votes: 6 10.7%
  • Kill a butterfly ten years ago.

    Votes: 7 12.5%
  • Kill a butterfly 50 years ago.

    Votes: 6 10.7%
  • Kill a butterfly 100 years ago.

    Votes: 9 16.1%
  • Kill Than...I mean, not sure.

    Votes: 12 21.4%

  • Total voters
    56
What I was trying to say was: how long ago must you kill a butterfly(not in the literal sense, but make a minor change) that would render the present world very different from how it is OTL.
There is a problem that it is hard to define "very different". For example, an external observer might have been able to predict in 280 BCE that Rome would probably gain control of the Mediterranean and Qin would gain control of China. However, the butterflies might prevent the ASB observer from predicting the names of the consuls for 275. The denizens of this board divide into those who try to fight against long term predictability by suggesting critical events (what if Leonidas Polk's horse had been stung by a bee and he had broken his neck in 1861) and those who point out that everything would probably have looked much the same. You are all wrong (at least in detail)!
 
It depends on how drastic the butterfly is. If it involves a suitcase nuke being detonated in Washington today, the world will be drastically changed by tomorrow. But if it is something minor, like one person doing one thing in their life differently, it would take years for the effect to be felt.


Outside the constraints of the OP, my view of the butterfly effect is similar to, and inspired by, that of Max Sinister in his excellent "Chaos TL." To simplify, the butterfly effect moves in ripples: areas and peoples nearest to where the divergence occurred are affected first. Until more distant groups interact with the first, they progress AIOTL. As time marches on, effects of the POD spread farther and farther. But it can take some years for it to change the entire world, especially in the pre-modern era.

I think that is an interesting idea and more workable to write with instead of "butterfly flaps its wings, entire world is changed NOW." But while I am somewhat lenient in the spread of the ripples, once an area is affected I generally am much more rigid about plausible divergence.
 

yellowdingo

Banned
Well, since there isn't any "Alternate History Theory" discussion board (there should be), I'm posting this here. How far back do you have to go before the world of today is unrecognizable due to butterflies. Could you change something minor yesterday? Does it take a bigger change farther back? I want to hear everyone's opinions on the speed and power of the butterflies.

String theory informs us the Universe is Debris of change in Possibility, Time Continuous change in possibility, and a Singularity The moment of change in Possibility.

It means cause and effect are occuring simultaneously separated by change in Possibility - not Time. The previous reality is still there but now you see the new reality and you respond to it and change progresses from there.
Worse still you currently see a reality that isnt there anyway and you respond to it like it was real thus creating debris of change in yourself so it isnt necessarily reality that changes - it is you.

ex- Airplanes didnt crash into the Trade Towers, you responded to the possibility of them doing so and thus shifted yourself out of the way...now imagine everyone understanding this before the trade towers are destroyed and not responding to the destruction - you would have found out whose reality was defined and validated by the future destruction and could have eliminated them.
 
It all depends on when the butterflies happen.

If during antiquity: Battle of Kades, Alesia or other important event happens in another way: Effects arent noticed for months or years even in the capitals of any nations.

If later(say 1492) but before the telegraph: It will be days at least before any change is noticed at all and a month until any change is noticed in the countrys capital

During the telegraphage up to radio: Atleast a day

radio: A few hours at the most

TV, Internet and beyond: Not even an hour until butterflies are noticed
 
also the closer to the effect you are the faster chage comes. Have CSA win ACW and effect in north America will be felt immediatly. In Europe later. In Mongolia and Bhutan decades might pass without any change

I hate to say it but look at TL 191. After a couple of decades the world become radically different.

I agree on the weather but with exceptions like the Protestant Winds and the Kamikaze the effect of weather on any particular historical event, personage etc are hard to predict so it ends up falling under of the category of "It rains because I need it to rain for the plot" instead of a calculated cause-effect relationship based on the PoD.

In the United States elections have been decided by the weather in a swing county in a swing state.
 
?Are there any such thing as minor changes? ,
Remember that movie about a girl running for the Subway,
In one She makes just as the door starts closing, in the other the door closes in her face, and she has to wait ten Minutes for the next train.
The Movie then tracks the Changes in Her life caused by this.

I can envision a entire different TL based on whether You had Ham & Eggs, v Bacon & Eggs for Breakfast yesterday.

There is also the Question of Your view of the Multiverse, and how Branching works.

Those that argue for it taking time [Information Theory] envision the new universe as a twig, starting at the POD and Growing over time into a separate branch.
As such Washington being shot at the Battle of Trenton, Christmas Eve, has no effect on King George flipping a coin to decide between Ham or Kippers, for Christmas Breakfast.

However there is the Idea that the new ATL appears, Instantly [ Quantum Theory], as a full Branch, complete and Distinct.
Under this view, King George's coin toss is a new completely random event, and can be be different than the result in OTL where Washington wasn't Shot.

Personally I prefer the first Theory, As It avoids the -- Every atom any where in Your Universe that that Zigs instead of Zagging, creates a new Universe-- Problem.
This Quantum Theory does however seem to be more in tune with Shroderners Cat.
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
the butterfly could also have no effect at all...

erverything can happen after all.
But this is a very good question, impossible to answer, but worthy to dispute...

So here is my first Thesis:
"The butterfly effect is always as quickly and as strong as the ASB want's it to be!"

This is, of course, only true for an almighty ASB. A minor ASB might not be able to control the butterfly effect to it's willing.


second Thesis:
"Following this, there is not the butterfly effect, but there are many different butterfly effects."

third Thesis:
"Strength, and Speed of a butterfly effect will remain constant after the ASB involvement."

If the (or more common another) ASB acts again, this can (but doesn't have to) result in a different butterfly effect.
 
No...

A butterfly flaps it's wings and the dust lifted flies up. That dust will later through wind and certain events cause a hurricane hundreds if not thousands of miles away weeks later. Now if that butterfly were to die before it was able to flap it's wings what difference would it make? Basically something small happens or it doesn't and what long term consequences happens?
 
Butterflies are loved by meteorologists because the equations governing the weather are non-linear. Thus a small effect can get bigger, which is illustrated by the example of "a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a tornado in China". This limits prediction beyond a few weeks because the starting condition cannot be exactly measured.

The problem is whether history is like predicting winds and rains which may be sensitive to butterflies or is more like predicting average temperatures or rainfalls which are more predictable.
 
What is the butterfly effect?
Essentially what we're referring to is a change that causes other changes.

For example, let's say someone doesn't see a certain movie or read a certain book, and rather than being inspired to go into a certain field of study, they go into another field of study. Thirty years down the road and someone's life is saved because they were suddenly there to save them, and said person goes on to cause a major war.

Okay, so that's a rather ridiculous example, but the point is that there was a small change that blossomed to cause lots of other changes simply because that one change altered the way one other thing happened, which changes the way half a dozen things happened, and so on and so forth.

It's chaos in action.
 

Hendryk

Banned
?Are there any such thing as minor changes? ,
Remember that movie about a girl running for the Subway,
In one She makes just as the door starts closing, in the other the door closes in her face, and she has to wait ten Minutes for the next train.
The Movie then tracks the Changes in Her life caused by this.
That movie was a rip-off of "Blind Chance" by Kieslowski.
 
There is no definite answer to how long it would be before any definite noticeable change is felt to be honest. It depends on how many degrees of separation there are between the butterfly and critical events. Ofcourse, the butterfly itself could build up to form a critical event of it's own.

Let me give you one example. Let's say that some obscure Barbarian to the north of the Han Dynasty was killed in 200 AD in a skirmish with Chinese soldiers. In our OTL , he survives, and by 1200 AD , he is an ancestor of Genghis Khan's father. In ATL , he does not survive, and hence pre empts many things, leading to a Nestorian Tribal Chieftian in place of Genghis Khan. This is a crude example of the butterfly effect , and how it can change the characteristics of trends.
 
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