Is there any consensus here on how to deal with pre-contact butterflies?

Rex Mundi

Banned
I know opinions will probably differ on this but is there any generally accepted way of dealing with butterflies, if say, a POD effects central Asia or Croatia or something before intercontinental contact? I was considering a different post-Roman world with a pod in the early 500's, and I wondered where that leaves the Americas. A literal and physical interpretation of the butterfly effect would imply that there might be significant changes across the ocean as well (or perhaps I'm misunderstanding/overthinking it?) As far as I can tell there wouldn't be any way of accounting for something like that without resorting to guesswork.
 
A rigorous application of physics and math says that, yes, everything changes the moment anything changes. However, since we do this thing to try and understand more about history, and randomly scrambling events on the other side of the planet does not further our understanding of history in any way, It's popular to put a "butterfly net" around isolated groups such as pre-Contact New World and pre-Contact Australia.

For myself, I hold fast to Toynbee's definition of a civilization, which means that butterflies take a very long time to escape the civilization in which things changed and only start having effects in other civilizations when the effects become logically impossible to ignore.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
Okay, thanks for the response. That sounds fairly sensible. That's essentially what I was going to do anyway (assume that civilizations without contact remain the same/almost the same).
 
I usually assume there's some kind of causality hyperspace that is independent of space and time. For example, in my TL sub-Saharan Africa has been barely touched by butterflies, but China, on the other hand, has been massively affected, despite the fact that Africa is much closer to Europe, the site of the initial POD. This is because China has more causal links to Europe than sub-Saharan Africa does during this period. Similarly, Central Asia has been barely affected, while Australia's history is going to be totally different. Since there are no causal links between the Old World and the New World prior to contact, events are pretty much going to play out as they did OTL until contact. Of course, this is not a rigorous approach, but it works for me.
 
The main thing I'd say is that you should have events even those not directly impacted be somewhat different at some point - for instance, even if your POD doesn't directly interfere with Arabia, the odds of Mohammad and Islam arising as they did OTL aren't very good.

How you figure this one ought should use Thespitron's model, IMO - changes in events in Gaul will probably wind up with changes in Britannia faster than changes in Iran will, simply because Britons and Britannia affecting events will be influenced by events in Gaul more than changes in Iran, assuming we trace cause and effect.
 

Jasen777

Donor
A rigorous application of physics and math says that, yes, everything changes the moment anything changes. However, since we do this thing to try and understand more about history, and randomly scrambling events on the other side of the planet does not further our understanding of history in any way, It's popular to put a "butterfly net" around isolated groups such as pre-Contact New World and pre-Contact Australia.

Agreed. I'm a butterfly fundie and even I won't get very upset with a butterfly net around an uncontacted continent. Although you rightly point out that in reality, things would change.
 
It also depends when they get contacted. Like let's say contact happens sooner, you could justifiably say the butterfly net was pierced there. Take if Europeans realize a couple of other continents are on the other side of the planet, but it's in 1392 or something, you could just have althistory begin from that point. Now if it happens later, things get complicated and butterflies will have to be taken into account.
 

Thande

Donor
There is no consensus. Most people favour the 'butterfly net' (as coined by Jared) which ignores quantum effects and assumes no changes in one continent affect the other continents until first contact. Because the alternative is kind of boring because the peoples in BOTH continents have become unrecognisable by the time they meet: you might as well be writing about a low fantasy world.
 

mowque

Banned
Because the alternative is kind of boring because the peoples in BOTH continents have become unrecognisable by the time they meet: you might as well be writing about a low fantasy world.


A net is nothing but a magical kludge anyway. It IS low fantasy.
 
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