alternatehistory.com

Obviously the consequences of this discussion are going to be in the Post-1900 forum, if there are any.

But on to business.

I must say I fundamentally disagree with the premise of this thread. All butterflies have consequence by definition. According the the theory of alternate history, even the most minor change imaginable, say, a bug being in the wrong place and being stepped on, will have consequences that create an alternate timeline.
Allow me to provide another example,

The absence of a Habsburg lip.

This is a trait passed on to the Habsburgs after their union with the line of Valois-Burgundy. Phillip the Bold first displayed this trait, and passed it on to all his Habsburg heirs. To butterfly away the Habsburg lip, Mary the Rich needs to marry someone else, creating a drastically different Europe with a different balance of power.
Scipio

I predict a 15-page argument between you and Elfwine.

Because this is an issue that has a huge impact on our understanding of the writing of alt-history, it probably bears discussion - though hopefully more in the way of an exchange of ideas than two irreconcilable positions shouting at each other. I kind of hope there's something other than finding out Sciopio and I basically agree by page 2, however, because wrestling with this idea is one of the tricky parts of writing good AH.


First off, it goes without saying that of course if you (don't) step on a bug, it creates an alternate timeline. If only Julius Caesar hadn't stepped on an ant, that ant would have gone on to...be stepped on by someone else. Maybe Mark Anthony. And if Mark Anthony stepped on that ant, he would...have stepped on an ant that OTL was stepped on by Caesar. Which would mean...absolutely nothing. But it would be different than OTL because the bug died at the hands of Julius Caesar.

If we try really hard we can come up with a way that stepping on that ant would be a cause for other effects, a trigger for those familiar with event programming in PC games.

But that's not the point. We all know what the lost horseshoe nail did, so even seemingly insignificant changes can turn out to be very significant.

Would Julius Caesar stepping on an ant cause the battle of Tannenberg to never happen? I say no.

But there are also less extreme examples. For instance, would Alexius II doing what he's done in my timeline (for the 99% of the site which hasn't read it, he helps the Third Crusade) make any difference to events in Mesoamerica at that time?

Again: No. There is no direct (Alexius doing this causes that) or indirect (Alexius causes an event from OTL not to happen, which means that what does happen is an event that leads to that) connection between events in Anatolia and the Levant and events in Mesoamerica.

On the other hand, there are some interesting consequences to France and England as a result of this. It is not that Alexius causes Arthur of Brittany to become King Arthur of England, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, but the events that lead to that are a side effect of the events that Alexius does influence.

But whether or not he steps on a bug doesn't really matter either, because its just a bug and the odds of any individual bug influencing anything are minimal.

Sometimes, a horseshoe nail is just a nail. The horseshoe is not lost, the horse is not lost, the message gets through on time anyway, the battle is won, the kingdom is saved.

And some changes are more likely to be like that than others.

I don't know enough about genetics to know if the Habsburg lip would be one of them. But certainly if Mary of Burgundy does not marry who she did, that matters.
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