It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's
wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world.
-Chaos Theory

This is also called the Butterfly Effect. What are your thoughts on this? If something in history could have changed, what would it be? Think of all possible outcomes.. there are thousands.

One for me is Hitler. If Hitler would have died in WWI (the first war he fought in, came to a near death experience) what would the world be like today? Better or worse, because it could be better for the lack of a horrifying experience in history, but it could also be worse for the population jump of millions.. Overcrowding? It could be we had to clear up more room, and we cut down large portions of the rainforests, or even something little as criminal rise. That could lead to another uprising, maybe even worse. Thoughts!

To even be able to argue chaos theory, you would need to be able to time travel.

Without fully understanding the mechanics, if any, of time travel, it would be impossible to predict any of the outcomes of it.

Look up temporal paradoxes. This thread really doesn't have anything to discuss in it.

Its not an argument, its simply a speculation.

Its an 'if this happened, what would occur' type discussion, not proving it true or otherwise.

Plus, thats not true. Watch the movie the butterfly effect. The man kept journals that were always there until the very end, then he went back in time through pictures. I know its a different concept, but it differs the temporal paradox , because he was still able to go back in time

So, your entire argument is based on a movie about speculation about what could happen if we were able to go back in time?

Discussing speculation about something no one knows, no one at all, and, frankly, material that is impossible to know, is futile, and will yield nothing.

The thing you're talking about is referred to as a temporal paradox, and if you researched it far enough, you'd understand what I mean. The grandfather effect is just about the same as the butterfly effect. Pure speculation that likely will never be proven/dis-proven.

If chaos theory is true for the system we live in (universe) it is not possible to change the future.
The future which we perceive, anyway.
:v

Hyde you misunderstood this thread.

The thread asserts that chaos theory is correct, and we are merely speculating as to what effects it could have.

It's not a discussion about whether or not chaos theory is correct (and quite frankly no one on this forum, me included, has the background to discuss such high level mathematics, or as you said, a time machine), it's just for fun buddy!


It's pretty crazy to think that if England had decided to ship prisoners to Canada instead of Australia, then Australians would have been a Dutch colony and thus all spoken Dutch.

It's impossible to go back in time, by our current physics.
Chaos theory serves only to illustrate the chaotic flow of nature and how it is impossible to predict outcomes because the act of predicting itself makes it change.

Like Hyde said, there isn't anything to talk about, really.

Read the OP. Did you just read the title and Hyde's post?

"What are your thoughts on this? If something in history could have changed, what would it be?"

Can't believe I am seriously quoting OP here... People should at the very least read the OP...

That's not really related to Chaos Theory at all.
If the thread is about imagining and proposing "what if?"s, then all right.
The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics says that every single possible outcome has happened in a different universe. Everytime something can take several different courses a new universe is created for each course. So everything that could happen has happened somewhere. There are universes with nazis ruling the world, universes where dinossaurs were never extinct and so on. In these infinite universes there are infinite versions of you that took several different paths during your life. You're just one of them.

This is all this thread was meant to be, a mere speculation on the topic to see what could be some of the outcomes, related to the Chaos Theory.