Potentially interesting scenarios with no butterfly effect?

What's a scenario that's highly unlikely due to the butterfly effect, that you would still like to explore anyway?

The rationale of it, we could say, is alternate history that instead of having a point of divergence, follows "ceteris paribus" where one thing changes and all other things remain equal.

For example, Iceland is settled in Greco-Roman times by Pytheas. History proceeds almost the same for centuries, with this lost island of pagan Ancient Greeks discovered by Catholic Irish monks and later Vikings in an otherwise OTL Medieval Europe.
 
The whole point of the butterfly effect is that the smallest of changes, even caused by a butterfly, can have massive unforeseeable consequences. An entire island being colonized has massive knock-on effects that cannot be ignored. For example, how many scientists, generals, or great leaders would now be on that island instead of Greece where they were historically? How wouldn't this have a massive effect on Greek history?

Although one can make the case that since there are infinite universes, many where events happen without the butterfly effect, that ignores the broader point.
 
The whole point of the butterfly effect is that the smallest of changes, even caused by a butterfly, can have massive unforeseeable consequences. An entire island being colonized has massive knock-on effects that cannot be ignored. For example, how many scientists, generals, or great leaders would now be on that island instead of Greece where they were historically? How wouldn't this have a massive effect on Greek history?

Although one can make the case that since there are infinite universes, many where events happen without the butterfly effect, that ignores the broader point.
Well the literary application of the butterfly effect doesn't match exactly its scientific application. It's just another interpretation of how alternate history could go.

It can be like climate prediction. Granularities eventually become impossible to predict accurately but trends are more predictable. A meteorologist or a weather predicting system can't predict the exact temperature it will be at 9 AM on the 15th of June 2050 due to chaos; but they can predict that it will be warmer in June that year than December. And despite not being certain of granularities, they can also use long term trends to predict change in global average temperature or regional average temperature.

The butterfly flaps its wings, this small perturbation in the air diffuses among the trillions of atoms in the surrounding air, averaged out over distance until the effects on the other side of the planet are infinitesimal. It takes very long time for this to affect large scale phenomena if ever, even if the exact positions of atoms in the air may be different.

So if Iceland was settled in Antiquity, within a few hundred years maybe all particular individuals are different people, but economies and populations interact similarly and overarching political and social trends are still roughly the same. The farther away from Iceland, the more similar to OTL.
 
Well the literary application of the butterfly effect doesn't match exactly its scientific application. It's just another interpretation of how alternate history could go.

It can be like climate prediction. Granularities eventually become impossible to predict accurately but trends are more predictable. A meteorologist or a weather predicting system can't predict the exact temperature it will be at 9 AM on the 15th of June 2050 due to chaos; but they can predict that it will be warmer in June that year than December. And despite not being certain of granularities, they can also use long term trends to predict change in global average temperature or regional average temperature.

The butterfly flaps its wings, this small perturbation in the air diffuses among the trillions of atoms in the surrounding air, averaged out over distance until the effects on the other side of the planet are infinitesimal. It takes very long time for this to affect large scale phenomena if ever, even if the exact positions of atoms in the air may be different.

So if Iceland was settled in Antiquity, within a few hundred years maybe all particular individuals are different people, but economies and populations interact similarly and overarching political and social trends are still roughly the same. The farther away from Iceland, the more similar to OTL.

Depends whether or not human history operates on the great man theory. Personally I don't think you can read meaningful trends into human history it's too random and delicate. You can't say for example that France will form and do x y and z. Napoleon might have been part of the system but it doesn't mean that the system would always result in French expansion.
 
Depends whether or not human history operates on the great man theory. Personally I don't think you can read meaningful trends into human history it's too random and delicate. You can't say for example that France will form and do x y and z. Napoleon might have been part of the system but it doesn't mean that the system would always result in French expansion.

I largely agree with this. Trends are very important as they help guide us in our unachievable quest for plausibility; for example, it's impossible to imagine the United States joining the Central Powers or the Axis in the world wars simply due to the trends of American society that favored isolationism or Britain (and to a lesser extent France). However like all trends, there is no single set line for events to take place. In reality it's a scatter plot where all these possible different events can take place and it is the "Great Man" that determines which point on this scatter plot is chosen. For example, due to the historical trends we think we see, it seems incredibly likely that the trend of German nationalism was so powerful in the 19th century that it suggests that a unified "Germany" was bound to happen at some point in some form or another. That it was Prussia that formed Germany, that included the south German states but excluded Austria, that was an extension of the Prussian monarchy with the Hohenzollerns at the helm, was the work of a "Great Man" - Bismarck - and it's impossible to see how Germany would form the way it formed, when it formed, without him.

This is all the effects of the "Great Man" functioning within the trend. There's also the possibility that he is simply able to change a trend to his will as well. This is something that someone like Hitler tried but failed to do.
 
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