This means if you go back into the past with your time machine and make change so subtle as killing a butterfly it will alter the course of history in profound ways and everything would be different today. I don't buy it. What impact could an individual butterfly have? What would it change and how?
Nonetheless, it's real. Your problem is, you are looking at it backwards. You're starting with the butterfly, and asking how that can possibly have any downstream effects. What you should be doing instead is examining an event that occurred. ANY event. Trace backwards to all of the things leading up to that event, and you are guaranteed to find the most astoundingly unlikely circumstances, conditions, and coincidences. Consider, for example, most marriages. How did the two people meet? What were the odds against those exact two people just happening to be at the same place at the same time? Look at how each person got there, and think of all the other places they could have been, all the times when their lives might have been a bit different. This holds true for any event you might wish. Ultimately, what eventually leads to major events in our lives comes down to very small things, perhaps too small to have been noticed or to have deserved any thought. "Fate", the constellation of circumstances that happen in our reality, is determined by an infinity of very small influences that change something that changes something else that changes something else. Granted, only a tiny percentage of small influences has any far-reaching effects. But all far-reaching effects are at some point initiated by small influences. That's how a universe works when you have countless interdependent variables.
Thank you for the thoughtful post! I've got nothing to say now, because this here will require a fair bit of consideration.
In space operas, it's always necessary that there be some means of traversing many light years within a short enough period of time for the plot to work. But this faces theoretical handicaps in our universe. Most authors use some obscure law of physics or aspect of our reality, not yet discovered, to do this. Hyperspace, etc. But at least one I've seen uses the notion that every infinitesimal thing that could go differently, creates a new universe where it DID go differently. Consider atomic decay, where which atom decayed creates a different universe than if some OTHER atom decayed. So the method of "travel" was to transit (permanently) to a different universe that differed only by that infinitesimal amount. And in the transit process, you can show up wherever you want in that different universe. For all practical purposes, instantaneous travel. Neat trick!
I killed a butterfly before it could land on a mans arm. Had it landed he would have killed it instead, and then bent over to pick it up. Just as he bent over the sniper made his shot....and ended up missing because the target had moved. The bullet struck the wall behind the man instead, scared him, and he ran to hide. The man is a scientist working on genetics. A year later he develops a cure for cancer. My mother is a teenager with breast cancer...she is cured. She has me 10 yrs later....and I reply to your thread.
In every case the physical universe serves to dampen rather than amplify perturbations. But the Butterfly effect is a great romantic thought.
I like to think this is related to the six Degrees of separation: For a good demonstration, check this site out: http://oracleofbacon.org/
Granny says, "You really believe if a butterfly flaps his wings in Brazil... ... it gonna cause a hurricane inna Atlantic Ocean? ... Ya must be a lib'ral."
