The Margin of Prediction

Adam Parsons

This is a question to all those in this forum who regularly compose alternate history scenarios:

"For a given POD, how long will it take before the changes in the ATL can no longer be accurately predicted within reasonable doubt?"

Discuss.
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

A second

I don't think anything is certain in any ATL I have seen, and certainly none I have written

Many OTL events occur against the flow of expectations, seemingly against logic etc

So there is always that other factor

Grey Wolf
 

Norman

I tend to agree with Grey Wolf on this one. Sure some big issues that are related to the actions of large groups of people may be predictable for awhile, but big PODs tend to be related to one big event, and after the change they are no longer really predictable.
 

Straha

Banned
predicting the entire flow of events nope? I find that father the POD the mroe you can get away with changing with changing lots of stuff.
 

LordKalvan

I would differentiate between macro changes (which should be harder to put in place, given the inertia of history, but easier to predict) and mini changes, which are in practice unpredictable.
After a generation at most, I would expect that the cumulative effect of mini changes would be such as to make it almost impossible to predict anything with accuracy.
I would assimilate a TL to a simplified mathematical model, which can predicts future behaviors but with significant in-built limitations.
And obviously there is no way to predict the future if the POD is significant enough (you cannot predict the behavior of a mathematical function after a cusp). An example (maybe not completely accurate) taken from OTL is the sudden diffusion of mobile phones, which in a very short time have significantly changed our behavior.
Would anyone bet that no Einstein or Leonardo Da Vinci was born in the last 10 years just because boy and girl could meet having access to mobile phones? Or, by the same token, that he/she was not conceived due to a fall out originated by a mobile conversation?

Sorry, forgot the main point: no one ever predicted the explosion of mobile use, and the associated behaviors!
 

Sean Swaby

I agree with Norman and Grey here. Basically anything right after the POD cannot be accurately predicted and by 10 years later, you are basically just making stuff up. The difference between these TLs and the ones in ASB is that here the authors of TL attempt to make a prediction that seems logical. Their prediction is not the only way things could happen of course, but mostly when doing TL's I try to do a lot of background research (hence fewer TLs, but I sacrafice number for realism) to try and garner any trends that can be seen in our own history (such as the fact that empires fall at some point or disintegrate or how industrialization would affect certain nations) and also to use logic and reason (which unfortunately doesn't always apply even in OTL- witness the madness of WWI and WWII). This sometimes leads to TLs that mirror or converge with OTL unfortunately, since OTL is the only real TL we have to work with for inspiration. On the other hand, it can lead to TLs in which many things appear the same, but a number of details are sufficiently different that any one of us would be somewhat lost and befuddled if we were to be somehow transplanted into the TL (like a world where there was no Vietnam War or with a POD that gave a modern Mayan state or something like)

Kalvan's post is spot on, if a bit biased towards the mathematics of it all.
 

sikitu

Wolf is right here. Actually, history cannot be predicted. It is possible to say that some events are more probable then others, but even in OTL, there are lots of events where things happened against all odds.

On the other hand, of course, any developments must be justified somehow to be credible. If you want Stalin to become a peace-loving priest, you better come up with a very reasonable explanation and a suitable POD. :)
 

Alayta

Actually i did my exam about a very simular question. Systems of self-organisation. Societies and even more the contact of several societies are such systems. they are stable ans thus predictable as long as they can provide a flow of information and material wich fits to the necessities.
If they can no longer provide this, they become unstable. This stadium can be detected on riots, increased crime, or whatever unusual things happen(must not be bad things!!!)
These thigs are called Fuctuations. Those increase in number. They are "tests" of the system, in which way it should change. At some moment a new State of stability is found and a self-organisation has taken place.
Often this goes along with fights as main fluctuations even if this is not nessecary(1968). So we have french revolution with increased instability until napoleon is defeated and a new stable system is established in europe. This lasts with only minor changes until the world wars. Since then we have a new one.

IT IS MATHEMAICALLY IMPOSSIPLE TO PREDICT THE OUTCOME even in smaller systems consisting only out of two plates and oil (Bernard-experiment).

As most of the pods are chosen to be in times of great fluctuations, nothing can be predicted. If you choose a pod in the beginning of a stable time, you can predict more. For example, a genius invents the explosion-motor in 1820.
In this case you could predict in wich way this invention leads the old stability into instability.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Like any fictional device the plausiblity of an AH story will depend mainly upon the talent of the writer to convince us that the story is so. I have seen convincing AH stories where the POD is thousands of years before the story and stories I did not believe at all where the POD was in the late 80's and the story in the present.

One consistency I think pretty universally applicable is that the amount of time that changes take place in should vary with the era. Unless its ASB, then anything happening in 900 will have relatively little effect even by 950. If it takes place in 1900 then its effects should be evident by 1910, unless its a very small departure.
 
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