23 replies to this topic

[brandishing_fist]

I just saw The Butterfly Effect (yes I know im a tad bit late) with Ashton Kutcher and it made me wonder so here's my question; if you could go back in time to change something or help someone, would you?

I dont know if I would, I'd be too frightened of the ripple effect it would have. :?

[angelicprincess104]

i don't think i would either. its sort of like back to the future when marty takes the almanac and then when he goes back to 1985 its a different 1985 and so he has to go back to 1955 to get it all right again (i know its an old movie but its still one of the best movie series of all time). i'd be too scared to fcuk things up

[BKBuffyGurl]

Yeah we are the people that we are because of the things that happen to us. Like in A Wonderful Life one little thing changed can screw up the world.

[Xilenx]

The ripple effect could be frightening...but there's an equal chance that only good stuff would happen as well. It's just movie cliche to assume that going back in time and doing a small tasks will somehow effect the entire world drastically. If I could, I would have definetely change someone's life for the better, perhaps something I've done and overall, couldn't have completely changed the outcome of the world.. I highly doubt it..

It's not like I was trying to mess with huge historical events, but just small tadpole events in my life, or in the life of others.

[StrongBad]

But there is the snowball effect where little things can end up changing major events, or an easier example is the "want of a nail."
it goes like for the want of a nail the horse was lost, for the want of a horse the knight was lost, for the want of a knight, the king was lost, and for the want of a king, the kingdom was lost,
all for the the want of a nail.
little, yes but if you take that nail away you might change the course of history. and face it good things might happen but do you really want to take the chance of screwing up with history?

[Xilenx]

Then the entire butterfly effect concept is based on the slippery slope, where you believe that doing a, will ultimately lead to z. however, you completely forget about the other 24 steps that can possibly stop or in fact, never happen.

The example makes you assume that there were no other nails for the horses, no other horses for the knight, no other knights for the king. To me, it sounds like a giant fairy tale, where theres only 'one', which I completely disagree with. If I never gave the nail to the horse (whatever it wants a nail for), are you saying that there are no other nails in existance that can go to the horse? And do you also claim that there is no other horse that knight is willing to ride, except that special horse? And do you believe that the King will only have 1 knight to protect him?

[wretched]

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Then the entire butterfly effect concept is based on the slippery slope, where you believe that doing a, will ultimately lead to z. however, you completely forget about the other 24 steps that can possibly stop or in fact, never happen.

I believe this too. If anybody saw the horrible film version of The Time Machine a couple of years ago, the narrator who built the time machine wanted to prevent the incident that killed his girlfriend (a robber who shoots her). So he builds it and goes back and prevents the incident from happening but she dies anyway (run over by a horse-drawn carriage)

[Spices86]

i don't think that I'd go back to change something, but rather go back to understand why it really happened.

[brandishing_fist]

Well the whole movie is based on the Chaos Theory, and basically the idea that the flap of a butterflies' wing in China can cause a change of weather in New York. Change one thing, change everything.

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It's just movie cliche to assume that going back in time and doing a small tasks will somehow effect the entire world drastically. If I could, I would have definetely change someone's life for the better

How do you know that changing one persons life for the better isnt changing yours for the worse? Or everyone else's life for the worse? Hmm... :wink:

[Xilenx]

That's some theory, relavent to manifest destiny, except..not with the you.S., but something about how you cannot escape your fate, which I don't believe in really.

Has anybody seen that Pepsi commercial with Jimmi Hendrix when he was still a kid? I like the commercial, because it's funny and a good advertisement, but seriously, would the choice of coke really make his choice in music? I highly doubt it.

[SeNiOr]

hmm... back to the future was one of my most favorite movies of all time 8) . has anyone seen frequency with dennis quaid? its about this cop who's able to contact his father in the past and prevent his father's death (his dad's a firefighter). but what ends up happening is that he screws up the "space-time continuum" (as Doc Brown put it) or something like that- im totally NOT a sci-fi buff so i dunno what terminology applies here- and so the dude's mom ends up dying and his entire life is changed in the present and he has all these new memories of her being dead, but he still has the old ones of when his father had died... i dunno, its hard for me to explain. its sort of a sappy movie but yeah i loved it. sigh, but don't you think that movies like this (the ones where some event in the past changes and has a ripple effect on everything else) have been done one too many times by hollywood?

[Xilenx]

It's a movie cliche, and it has completely affected our minds. Nobody would really care if all good happened for going back in time, and nobody would want to care. But nobody ever thinks that there is more likely of chance that if you did a small favor or something extremely small, it would probably not effect the world at all.

[Frightcrawler]

In the book Timeline, that's exactly what happens. They go back through time, but no matter how many things they do (large ones at that), history does not change that much.

[Xilenx]

Now that I don't believe. Large political/social actions will happen to change history...

[wretched]

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Well the whole movie is based on the Chaos Theory, and basically the idea that the flap of a butterflies' wing in China can cause a change of weather in New York. Change one thing, change everything.

What if the butterfly was meant to flap its wing and actually prevent something like a hurricane thousands of miles away?

[brandishing_fist]

Well yeah that's what Im saying. If the butterfly was meant to flap its wing at a certain time and place, and you go back, change one little thing and mess with that, then the effect will be greater than you think.

It's a big movie cliche, but it got me interested and there has been tons of thorough scientific research done on it, as I've found out, and it's not just a little idea that someone cooked up. When I find the website again that says that the theory can be proven, I'll post it.

[WEBS]

See this is exactly why I suggest someone build a time machine. Why doesn't anybody listen?!?

[BKBuffyGurl]

Why don't you build one and then you can tell us who killed Jesus. And when you come back they'll probably put in on the Wall o' Fame.

[Xilenx]

I bet if somebody witnessed that, that person was probably killed right after..

[WEBS]

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Why don't you build one and then you can tell us who killed Jesus. And when you come back they'll probably put in on the Wall o' Fame.

I've tried, my attempts failed. I think I need more Plutonium, stupid flux capacitor isn't fluxing.