Low Butterfly Points of Divergence

Alright good people, I have a simple question for all of you, what are some points of divergence who's affect on wider history is minimal at best, but can still be considered notable?
 
Vinland. And I’m not talking about the multitude of surviving or differing Vinland TLs. But I’m saying Vinland as an example.

One can basically have any pre age of sail/exploration expedition, heck even settlement land in the Americas, die off, and it might just still let history run its course until 1492.
 
It would have to affect as few people as possible, because in my view nothing propagates butterflies quite like human interactions, because changing someone's interactions changes their experiences which changes how they act in the future, until you get a swarm of butterflies.

To answer the question, perhaps have whoever originally colonized South (?) Sentinel Island to be lost at sea instead, nothing would happen for millennia in the outside world.
 
Anne Frank's death in 1945.
Robert Heinlein's navel career being diverted.
The Asimov family moving to the US in 1921.
Robert Howard's 1936 Suicide.

The death of three of my great great uncle's and one great great Aunt between October 1862 and April 1865 (the last somewhere between Petersburg and Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia) My great great grandmother, the only surviving sibling, used her maiden name as a first name for one of her sons, and her descendants kept using it. That name, Kerney.
 
Last edited:
Depends on your perspective on the butterfly effect. If you view human agency as the primary determinant of variations in ATLs, then there’s probably a lot of minimal ones. However, if you examine the probabilities involved with human conception (the number of sperm involved and the probability that any single one is roughly equally likely to take part in conception), then technically, any person conceived after the POD is completely different from IOTL and massive changes will be apparent within a generation regardless of how relatively minimal or non-decisive the exact POD is.
 
This would depend a bit on your view on randomness. For example, suppose that I record the exact time of decay for an atom of an unstable isotope (an event that is as far as I understand truly random). Then I go back in time and observe the experiment from afar. Will the atom decay at the exact same time as the first time or not?

My take is that it will, that randomness exists only before an event takes place and then becomes ”fate”. There are no rerolls. If so, the exact same people Will be born after the POD as long it does not in any way affect the physical circumstances of their conception. Granted, wheater can be hugely affected by small variations and has the potential to change physical circumstances globally after a POD. But it won’t necessarily happen. I could well accept ”Historical” births for generations after a very small, isolated POD.

On the other hand, if you believe in rerolls, then yes, even the smallest POD will change all subsequent conceptions.
 
*pause*
*looks left*
*looks right*
*puts on shades*

VARDAR INSURGENTS!
YEEEEEAAAAHHH!

*takes shades off and scurries away*
 
The reroll concept, though it certainly has a logic to it, just seems like it goes to far. The POD is generally a completely independant 'die roll' to nearly every other event. It makes very little sense to me that having charlemagne die young would affect who would become emperor of china within a lifespan, or the chief of some American tribe within even a dozen life times

Changes, imo, need time and a medium (generally human interaction) to propagate.
 
The reroll concept, though it certainly has a logic to it, just seems like it goes to far. The POD is generally a completely independant 'die roll' to nearly every other event. It makes very little sense to me that having charlemagne die young would affect who would become emperor of china within a lifespan, or the chief of some American tribe within even a dozen life times

Changes, imo, need time and a medium (generally human interaction) to propagate.

In this case, the medium is causality on the quantum or atomic level. Any single difference in the initial conditions of a system will invariably multiply, quickly differentiating the two systems. Sure, by pure coincidence, you’ll get some of the same events, but even things as fundamental as weather can drastically alter human behavior. Of course, once any specific event has a different set of initial conditions, then all bets are off. To follow your example, if Charlemagne dies early and the cumulative molecular displacement results in a storm in China which causes the emperor and his concubine to not conceive the same child as OTL, then clearly the butterfly effect is being strictly observed. Even the phrase “butterfly effect” originates from an conjecture that individual agency (in this case, from a butterfly) can impact macro-level physical phenomena on a substantial level. Of course, it’s all fiction, so it doesn’t matter all that much and it’s down to personal preference when you’re writing TLs. I personally prefer a strict observance of the butterfly effect because I see it as a less deterministic, and therefore more interesting, way to conceive of history. But that’s just a personal choice. It depends on your view of whether or not quantum events are deterministic (which I don’t believe they are)
 
A little something from the Wiki summarizing three different approaches to butterflies:
While there is a broad consensus on the forum that the butterfly effect must be taken into account to cover all the secondary effects, there is some controvery about the application of it. The most 'fundamentalist' approach says that absolutely anything that happens after the PoD has the potential to go differently to OTL.

The other, more moderate approach to the butterfly effect is to assume that the Butterfly Effect spreads outwards from the origin of the Divergence, reaching more far away lands only after some time, time the secondary effects need to build up and reach those lands. Even then, the moderate approach will tell you the butterfly effect only affects the “context system” of the Divergence's region. For example, if the PoD happens in medieval Peru, then it may take some decades for the butterfly effect to manifest in Mesoamerica, and even centuries for it to reach outlying regions, while European history will not be affected until 1492.

The third approach, to disregard the Butterfly Effect more or less exactly, or to have it affect or not affect the world at the author's arbitrary will, is as said pretty much discredited on the Forum, though very popular in professional literature.
 
No Zulu Empire, or even a pre-British bantu wank, simply because they were too far away for trade to get them any tech to resiest the empire.
 
It depends on your view of whether or not quantum events are deterministic (which I don’t believe they are)
Quantum events generally don't propagate up to affect macro level events as I understand it, save in a few fringe cases involving fundamental forces like gravity.

I very much subscribe to the second theory betelgeuse quoted, it makes more sense and it's a lot less work for the writer that follows it
 
The reroll concept, though it certainly has a logic to it, just seems like it goes to far. The POD is generally a completely independant 'die roll' to nearly every other event. It makes very little sense to me that having charlemagne die young would affect who would become emperor of china within a lifespan, or the chief of some American tribe within even a dozen life times

Changes, imo, need time and a medium (generally human interaction) to propagate.
In this case, the medium is causality on the quantum or atomic level. Any single difference in the initial conditions of a system will invariably multiply, quickly differentiating the two systems. Sure, by pure coincidence, you’ll get some of the same events, but even things as fundamental as weather can drastically alter human behavior. Of course, once any specific event has a different set of initial conditions, then all bets are off. To follow your example, if Charlemagne dies early and the cumulative molecular displacement results in a storm in China which causes the emperor and his concubine to not conceive the same child as OTL, then clearly the butterfly effect is being strictly observed. Even the phrase “butterfly effect” originates from an conjecture that individual agency (in this case, from a butterfly) can impact macro-level physical phenomena on a substantial level. Of course, it’s all fiction, so it doesn’t matter all that much and it’s down to personal preference when you’re writing TLs. I personally prefer a strict observance of the butterfly effect because I see it as a less deterministic, and therefore more interesting, way to conceive of history. But that’s just a personal choice. It depends on your view of whether or not quantum events are deterministic (which I don’t believe they are)
Quantum events generally don't propagate up to affect macro level events as I understand it, save in a few fringe cases involving fundamental forces like gravity.

I very much subscribe to the second theory betelgeuse quoted, it makes more sense and it's a lot less work for the writer that follows it
I agree entirely. Part of the fun for me of going by the second theory is to extrapolate what may happen from a POD in the immediate future and figure out what changes right away, what changes a generation later, the generation after, and so on and so forth. Now that we live in a smaller world, I'm sure the butterflies may fly faster and farther for any recent PODs, but in the old days, news travelled very slowly, so it could take months to even years for say the Ming Emperor to hear about a TTL, POD death of the Pope, a person who likely has a very minimal effect on the affairs of Ming China beyond those in the know over there knowing of the Pope as the guy in charge of that distant land called Europe.
 
Top