User blog comment:VonGlusenburg/Alternate universes, probability and alternative outcomes/@comment-1375165-20120816052432

Completely intending to be a buzzkill, this way of thinking ignores a lot of things.

First, you're assuming the many-worlds interpretation is true - which you're taking more on faith than a jehovah's witness. Then even if the theory is true, you're missing the fact that quantum indeterminacy cancels out at the macroscopic level so, for the age of the universe, we should expect this splitting into alternate realities to only produce realities that are identical to our own.

Second, the weather may be sensitive to the initial conditions of a weather system (the insignificance of your typing as an initial condition notwithstanding...) but social dynamics among humans are not quite so sensitive. You'll just have the odd cases where a friend wants to skip class and switching "Man, don't do that" with "Go for it" may end up saving him from a school shooting. This is actually what makes finding those pivotal moments in history such an important task for an alternate historian since changes at other moments would do so little.

Third, and this is less a comment on what you're saying than a point I find worth mentioning, the world is deterministic. When considering how an altered event will affect the future, it helps to look at the alt-event as a cause that has changed and ask yourself what is the effect of that difference on future events which are in line with that cause. As I mentioned in LLB's blog, the sex of farmers in Japan isn't causally linked to an English King having a stroke a year earlier so their children won't be any different than if the King had gone on living.

Just something to keep in mind for anyone who wants to make a timeline where Robert E. Lee stubs his toe then a hundred years later a Kennedy tries to turn the U.S. into a religious dictatorship. That kind of divergence will only make a difference at those pivotal points.

For what it's worth: you're so right about our actions influencing the world around us. Don't ever get discouraged from that fact. It's why voting in elections is important, recycling even one can is awesome and giving even a few dollars to charity is amazing. I think it's great to believe in the power of individuals. I hope no one takes what I've said as discouraging it.