Small Details And The Effects on The Future

[Ferbian]

A lot of things happens in the world. A lot of things that some might have thought "If I did something different, it could've changed everything". And that's what this thread is all about.

Some might think otherwise that if some specific little detail didn't happen it couldn't have changed everything, that it would've happened anyway. I tend to lean to a mixture of both because of things like once saying "CM Punk would've been turned heel with or without Jeff Hardy, it was in the plans of WWE obviously". But I've also said the other thing about soccer matches for example "If they had scored that goal that would've brought them to 3-1 instead of 3-0, could they possibly have won the match 3-4?". It's all things that could've potentially happened, we will never know though.

Obviously either way will have some kind of impact on the future. The thing I want to ask though is - Which one of those things to you lean the most to? Do you believe that something is bound to happen no matter how the twist of the past goes ? Or do you believe that without a specific small event, it could've changed everything?

 

[Xemmy]

I think that "The Sound of Thunder" had it right. The farther you go back, the more one little detail can change everything. If you killed a butterfly 70 million years ago, then all the plant it would have pollinated would be left unpollinated, and all of it's offspring would have never existed so they wouldn't pollinate, or their offspring, or their's, so on and so forth. Killing the right butterfly could cause huge things to change in the modern day world, even losing the existence of the human species. It's called the Butterfly Effect. As the saying goes, "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."

Ofcourse so I suppose small details mean alot the further down the road we're looking. But in the short term. Things that are already bound to happen, likely will.

 

[LigerBomb]

In a way you can believe in both. It's basically the concept of Fate and The Butterfly Effect (TBE), with perhaps a little bit of simplified Schrödinger's Cat (SC) thrown in the mix. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, or at least they don't converge until a specific "event".
Fate will happen no matter what (supposedly). Therefor whatever does happen is "meant to happen". But until it does there are multiple possibilities --or superposition. TBE's premise (along with some Chaos Theory) is that slight changes eventually cause tremendously divergent ripples of change. So in a way TBE presents options, all of them simultaneously viable (SC), then Fate --as the invisible or metaphysical quantum event-- decides, or rather observes, the actual outcome. Since only one version of TBE can ever happen regardless of the many possibilities, whatever does happen then is "meant to happen" i.e. Fate.

 

[Decarow]

To me, your question wasn't too in depth, so i'm not going to give a huge in depth answer like the other guys.

I think that small details are over looked. If the soccer team did score that point, they could have gained the momentum to stage a comeback and win.

Let's look on a broader scale though. What would have happened had Colonel Stauffenberg of the Wermacht had successfully assassinated Hitler? Some say that some of his successors were more extreme than he was, so things could have gotten worse. Or the people of Germany would have wisened up, I don't know. Would it have changed history? Definitely. However looking into the smaller details would it have really mattered? Hitler killed himself 9 months later. It was late in WW2 and the damage to the Jews had ben done.

Of course all these answers are theories. As of right now, unpracticed theories. Basically a bunch of "what if".

 

[ITurnGirlsGay]

I have my own personal take on this situation.

A number of years ago I was working at Trader Joe's in Laguna Beach, CA. I was hooking up with this girl and I decided to bring her to my meet my friends at this bar we frequented. As soon as we arrived I was asked by my friend to step away from the car and follow him as he had something to tell me in private.

Upon following him I was informed that our best friend had been killed that night in a drinking and driving accident. As anyone would imagine, none of us were happy. We had all found out at various different points in the evening and had stayed there to drink with each other and remember Chris. The girl remained with me and we all got drunk agreeing to call a cab in his honor.

As one would expect, there was one person who failed to stick to the plan and that was the girl I brought with me. She, of course, "was fine to drive." I, however, was not about to let this happen. I stood behind her car and refused to move. I stood there and listened to her bitch, complain, cuss me out, and tell me to fuck off. I would not move. My best friend, Liam, tried to get me to move and I would not. It got to the point where he and I had a conversation, but I still would not move. After that conversation and a little conversation, I still refused to move and it lead to a fight between he and I.

We got into it for a minute there and he finally stopped and asked if he could explain something to me. He explained to me that people will do what they are going to do. You can explain every logical point to them, but it doesn't mean that they are going to listen or, for that matter, do what's logical. You can beg, plead, explain, work with, kiss ass, etc..but there's nothing you could have done that would have changed anything. People WILL do what they want to do.

I let her drive off, despite telling her that she would get a DUI, and she DID get a DUI. Despite everything, there's nothing I could have done. As much as I would have liked to have thought I could have changed that night, I was mistaken. She was going to leave no matter what.

My moral here is this; no, you cannot do anything. People will do what they want to do. It's our nature. If they're not going to listen to FRIENDS (I am emphasize this as friends you would die for), and family, then who would they listen to? Chances are, nobody.

My personal take, feel free to disagree.

 

[Serious Mozzarella]

I think that "The Sound of Thunder" had it right.

Pretty much everything this guy said. I'm a firm believer in the Butterfly Effect:

The butterfly effect is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; namely that small differences in the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. Although this may appear to be an esoteric and unusual behavior, it is exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

The first time I ever heard something like this, I was doing a science experiment in middle school, which won all kinds of awards by accident (I didn't actually know what I was doing, to be honest, I just read about it in a book) because of the incorporation of physics, chaos theory, and specifically, the Butterfly Effect. I had a giant makeshift mountain that was filled with all kinds of toy branches and trees, with 6 little paths all creating more paths on the way down. The ball would end up in one of 4 situations when it hit the bottom, and the smallest change in the environment can change the entire situation the ball would end up in. So I would put branches, or whatever the fuck into one of the forks in the paths, and the ball would go the opposite way it would have.

Anyway, I apologize for the giant digression, but ever since I read about it, and did that experiment, this concept always stuck in my mind, and I think about it all the time.

 

[TheAnimal]

I think they can do, it depends on how small the detail. Using the football example, the team that scores has to react to their goal, it can be a reaction to try to keep the goal, or it can be a reaction to try and press on for more. But the goal had changed things because it would then force a reaction from the other team to try and claw it back or to damage limitation. But the dynamics of the situation have changed. And then it can have a knock on effect on things like suspensions, injuries etc which can then have a knock on effect for the rest of the season.

Using a university example. When i was there, say i had missed a lecture because of a bus delay or something, then i wouldnt know what was being covered in the semiar, if i dont have that knowledge then it can effect the next essay i have to write, the essay will affect my grade for the that subject. My grade for that subject would affect my year grade and then that would impact on my overall degree. That would be because of a small detail of a bus delay. The delay could have occurred because say, someone crossed without looking and then the bus had to slow down or brake.

Its funny though because if people were so worried about it then people may not do anything, or do everything they possibly could.

 

[The Insano Shiekh]

I think things are going to happen regardless. I mean there's always the possibility of something else happening if a certain event hadn't have happened, but I think that it's part of life that we imagine. If a team was meant to win, they're going to win. Yet sometimes it seems like a small detail could have affected it all so much.

For example, let's use the theory on time traveling: If you go back in time and say, kill a bug, it could mean that the species of bug could have been one to destroy the boll weevils, and American crops could have been destroyed.

I believe that things happen no matter what, but sometimes I wonder.

 

[The Crock]

One small detail can change everything. I honestly wholeheartedly believe that. It's like this, if I was to drink a glass of milk and I ran out of milk, I would go to the store. Let's say the store is getting held up and I call the police. Had I not drank that milk the robber would have gotten away and who know what would have happened. Any little thing can change the outcome of history and the future, I mean it.