I think the point here is intent. Sure, tagging a sign or having a conversation with a stranger might have far reaching consequences, but we don’t know what those consequences could be and we don’t know what the consequences of not doing it would be, either.
Time travellers, though? They know exactly how the world will be as a result of them not doing anything, and they want to keep it that way.
Exactly this. I have no idea how talking to a stranger 10 years ago changed his life or mine or the butterfly effect turned out.
I often think to myself what would change if I did that. Not play online with friends? Probably not much, but what if I chose a different that come with different connections, took a different class in college.
We have no frame of reference for what actions did. Just the present
You have a good point, but I think you can also read it in a different way. You can understand it as an encouragement. It is an answer to the question “what can I do? I am just a small nobody”.
If you understand that time travelers are scared to change even the smallest things because they will alter the future, it will give you a perspective to see that everything anyone does can make a difference.
And, there’s both sides of the butterfly effect theory. The one side is that tiny changes can ripple through the world and have a massive effect. The other side is that seemingly big changes sometimes don’t have much of an effect at all.
If you’re a time traveller and you go back in time, you know that there might be a very small number of possible futures where you exist. An even smaller number of futures where you’re a scientist. An even smaller number of futures where you’re a scientist who figures out how to build a time machine. And so-on. So, you don’t want to risk any disruptions that might negatively effect the world that you know.
At the same time, in the present, it’s hard to know what to do. Big protest movements often have minimal impact. The things that do have an impact are impossible to predict: something unexpected happens while a reporter (or these days a big influencer) happens to be filming, and something about it goes viral.
If you don’t want things to change, you don’t touch anything because even a small change could have huge consequences. If you do want things to change, it’s hard to know what to do because even a big change often seems to have few consequences.
I think the point here is intent. Sure, tagging a sign or having a conversation with a stranger might have far reaching consequences, but we don’t know what those consequences could be and we don’t know what the consequences of not doing it would be, either.
Time travellers, though? They know exactly how the world will be as a result of them not doing anything, and they want to keep it that way.
Exactly this. I have no idea how talking to a stranger 10 years ago changed his life or mine or the butterfly effect turned out.
I often think to myself what would change if I did that. Not play online with friends? Probably not much, but what if I chose a different that come with different connections, took a different class in college.
We have no frame of reference for what actions did. Just the present
You have a good point, but I think you can also read it in a different way. You can understand it as an encouragement. It is an answer to the question “what can I do? I am just a small nobody”. If you understand that time travelers are scared to change even the smallest things because they will alter the future, it will give you a perspective to see that everything anyone does can make a difference.
That’s literally the opposite of the moral of every time travel story ever told.
And, there’s both sides of the butterfly effect theory. The one side is that tiny changes can ripple through the world and have a massive effect. The other side is that seemingly big changes sometimes don’t have much of an effect at all.
If you’re a time traveller and you go back in time, you know that there might be a very small number of possible futures where you exist. An even smaller number of futures where you’re a scientist. An even smaller number of futures where you’re a scientist who figures out how to build a time machine. And so-on. So, you don’t want to risk any disruptions that might negatively effect the world that you know.
At the same time, in the present, it’s hard to know what to do. Big protest movements often have minimal impact. The things that do have an impact are impossible to predict: something unexpected happens while a reporter (or these days a big influencer) happens to be filming, and something about it goes viral.
If you don’t want things to change, you don’t touch anything because even a small change could have huge consequences. If you do want things to change, it’s hard to know what to do because even a big change often seems to have few consequences.