The butterfly effects would add up and and any zygote formed would not be the hitler-as-we-know anymore, since it would be a different combination of sperm and eggs.

Who needs guns when you got a time machine? Don’t like your highschool bully, just bump into their parents back in time. Or you know, “bump” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) into their parents.

  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    A tiny change could mean a big change but it doesn’t mean that change must be unlimited. For example a double pendulum is a classic chaotic system. There is no solution but that doesn’t mean the pendulum can move greater than the length of its segments. It’s still a bound system.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

    More importantly, in the real world, if you push a double pendulum, it won’t flail endlessly. It will eventually converge to the single state of rest.

    • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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      15 hours ago

      what does any of that have to do with anything I said? By the way, that wikepedia page doesn’t contain the word “closed” anywhere in it. just saying

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        A double pendulum is bound by definition! It is a fixed point, a line with a 2 axis joint, and another line. That’s the definition.

        Just because a system is chaotic doesn’t mean it can move in unlimited ways. A chaotic pendulum cannot move outside it’s predefined limits of its geometry despite being chaotic.

        The real world imposes far more constraints. A double pendulum starts out in a known state. It gets pushed. It moves chaotically for a minute, then returns to its original rest state.

        In the context of Hitler’s parents, you shove the dad, he moves chaotically for a second, then goes back to walking. No long term change has happened.

        • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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          11 hours ago

          I completely agree with what this comment says. It’s still irrelevant though. Where did I say it has to be unbounded? You are countering an argument I did not make. Whether the result is divergent or not is irrelevant. The point is that “not having a closed form solution” is not the meaning of chaos, which was your original wrong statement.

          • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            No closed form solution is one property. It’s not wrong, only incomplete. But if a system of equations had a closed form solution, it wouldn’t be called chaotic. For example any exponential equation like x^y is extremely sensitive to initial conditions yet it isn’t chaotic.