You will behave slightly differently, and that will make the people around you behave slightly differently, and so on. Some of those differences will be enough to make an event happen that wouldn’t have otherwise. Or prevent an event that otherwise would have happened. And those events will ripple out and cause/uncause other events too. The scale of these differences will tend to increase over time.
Note that a butterfly flapping its wings was specifically chosen because it is such a tiny difference in initial conditions. The butterfly effect is exactly that such small differences will eventually result in large differences, in a chaotic system.
I understand the concept; I guess we differ on the size and scope of the differences produced.
Obviously, I will make every effort to produce a large difference in my family’s income. As soon as I’m able to talk, I’ll start convincing my parents that I’m not delusional, and I really do have a mature mind with memories of future (to them) events. Of course they won’t believe me at first, but after I get one prediction after another right, they’ll have no choice but to believe me. At that point, I’ll start giving my dad stock picks, and he’ll make a ton of money, and we’ll move to a nicer house in a nicer climate than I grew up in. And so we’ll have different neighbors and friends than we did the first time around.
But those are all local effects. I don’t see how my dad buying IBM could affect Clay (as he was known then) beating Liston, and our making a ton of money betting on that. Or the Jets winning the Super Bowl with Joe Namath.
I guess it’s possible that if I got famous as a whiz kid, I could run for office and make some substantial differences, but I’m not inclined to do that. I’d be perfectly happy just being rich.
There isn’t really room to differ on that. A chaotic system is one which is super-sensitive to initial conditions, such that any change, no matter how small, will be responsible eventually for a completely different dataset.
The Earth is a chaotic system, since it contains many chaotic systems. So there is no doubt about the scale of changes.
However, where we could differ is in the timeframe. Perhaps just changing a few local things would not make much noticeable difference to the rest of the world in your lifetime?
Well, it’s difficult to know this for sure of course. But the kind of changes you’re talking about; convincing several people that you are from the future and can predict the future, and making million-dollar wins at the bookies, I suspect would make huge changes in no time at all.
Heck, your scenario is so extreme I could even conceive of how that could happen in one step: A boxer hears that you have bet that he will lose the next fight. His confidence is shot and he and his manager decide to cancel the fight. So, who and when is the next heavyweight championship match?
I voted yes, absolutely, thinking that there are a lot of things I’d like to prevent and change, but after reading through this thread, I’ve changed my mind to “no, absolutely.”
I already had that “adult in a kid’s body” thing growing up, and my parents were pretty good about letting me take part in adult conversations. The problem is that they were also big on respecting one’s elders, and in their view, there was no such thing as a respectful disagreement. There are also probably a lot of things that happened that went over my head the first time, that I’d pick up on and want to comment on if I were to relive those moments as an adult. Going back in time would mean a good sixteen years either censoring myself, or speaking up and getting in trouble. I’d probably snap after having my opinion disregarded one too many times and stop being the agreeable kid I was the first time around. My parents might have react by treating me the crazy, abusive way their parents treated them and the way my cousins were treated by my aunts and uncles. This would ruin my childhood and my opinion of my parents and possibly scar me for life.
Sure, why not? My biggest fear would be being trapped as a slave to my mom who would be even younger than I am now. My other fear would be having to wait so long before becoming an adult being able to do adult things.
The older I’ve gotten the faster time moves, so being trapped as a child wouldn’t last long, relatively speaking. I’d be so occupied doing so many things differently and better the time would seem to fly by even faster.
The creepiest problem would be sex. I have to wait how long before I get to throw myself at an adult and say, “do me baby, oh yeah!”
Aye the agony! I would do it in a minute but my daughters! My daughters! I’d do anything for them so I can’t make them not exist and I am certain they would not exist.
In a heartbeat. In. A. Heartbeat. You wouldn’t even need to give me the twenty-four hours; just offering me the opportunity to nuke this life from orbit and start over would be good enough. As a matter of fact, I’ve been lurking on this message board for a while, and finally decided to register, just so that I could vote in this poll. My memory only goes back to about age five so, yeah, getting to undo the last thirty-five years? I’d sell my hypothetical soul to be able to do that!
Lucky duck.
My parents weren’t bad, or abusive, or anything; we just don’t speak the same “language.” I’d love to have the chance to go back and try to develop a relationship with them again, only this time, with the User’s Manual!
I would push back on that, and say that the poll boils down to that, if you have those things. I’m very happy for you and your wife; maybe, if I’d been happily married for 20+ years, I would have a different answer to the poll question. Unfortunately, everybody doesn’t get to meet their soul mate. Sometimes, you only meet a manipulative shrew who cleans out your bank account, obliterates your credit, and cheats on you, and neither the well-meaning best efforts of friends and relatives, nor the best therapy you can still manage to afford, is enough to help you get over it.
I accept your terms.
Regarding the chaos theory discussion, I’ll take my chances. I guess I’m probably the kind of guy who’s selfish enough to risk unmaking reality in order to solve his own personal problems.
I agree with you completely. I would risk unmaking this reality in an instant to save my friend.
My friend was my soulmate. I never felt about anyone other woman the same way in my life. I never found another who could could ever replace her in my heart.
I wonder how many would be the opposite of this if they were truly honest?!
I don’t have kids, but I do a wife. While I love her, there are lots of women out there and no way I’d settle for just one. Marriage should be a contract: 5 years with a renewal option.
Certainly not, unless you want to. Your 3 yo self having the memories and knowledge you have now would be a phenomenon. You’d certainly be able to interact with scientists, journalists, relious leaders, poiticians, etc… depending on what you’re willing to disclose. You could probably enroll in an university by age 4, etc…
My marriage has not been idyllic. We’ve had problems, and at one point separated for nearly a year. But we’re back together now, and for all our trials, meeting her is by far the best thing that has ever happened to me. If I believed in gods, I’d thank them for her and our kids every night. I can’t conceive of anything that would be worth giving them up.
The upshot would be plenty of quality time to get more writing done. The downside would be waiting for a decent word processor to arrive. I didn’t get my first PC until ~1990, so I’d be waiting a while.
Getting to see my friends again (and wife) would be priceless. I love a lot about my life now, but it’d be too tempting an offer to refuse.
But then there’s the annoyances of young life: losing teeth, sitting through classes you already know the material to, profoundly limited fashion options… and in my case no good computer technology for a bit.
The more I think about it, the worse this proposal sounds. Trapped in a kid’s body, with presumably adult desires, needs, and impulses? Horrible. No, hellish.
What if you end up undoing something and causing even greater damage? Maybe the incident itself was the work of another history-re-liver. So you waited and went down to Florida to warn NASA to check the O-rings on Challenger. You just messed up someone’s quest to prevent Christa McAuliffe from crashing the Space Shuttle into Salut 7 and triggering the Great Nuclear Space War of 1986. Congratulations.
Other than the obvious exploiting of stock price or lottery number data, I might be able to make myself into a childhood genius and get myself placed on one of those genius tracks that gets you a PhD at age 18 and a pretty much guaranteed life of success. I’ve felt at times “one step behind” and felt that if I could redo high school (let alone toddlerhood), I could dramatically alter nearly everything about my life. Spend less time studying unnecessary details (that won’t be on the test) in high school and more time being the big picture, genius thinker. Avoid dealing with struggling to understand Calculus and spend more time schmoozing with university admissions officials. Sail through intro college courses. Harvard PhD here I come!
I would do this without a moment’s hesitation and, in fact, it’s something I’ve contemplated for the last few years. I was a significant jerk much of my life until I got a few years of anger management therapy and now, in my 50s, I get to look back at the mess. I’m reasonably successful despite all that but I would love the opportunity to do it again but as a positive nice guy. I don’t think that my actual life, in terms of jobs and career etc would have to change, but my personal life could be greatly improved.
Also, though my wife and I are comfortable financially and should have a comfortable retirement, I don’t feel that it’s secure enough against certain events or circumstances, so I would definitely use my money somewhat differently in the early years.
I wouldn’t even consider any grand changes of historical events.