Thoughts on Episode 8ACV06 – I Know What You Did Next Xmas (SPOILERS)

[Reply #40 on:]

I think the obvious intention of the people making something is the strongest argument, personally -- but I suppose you must adhere to Roland Barthes' Death of the Author theory.

Yeah, I agree with this. The writer's obvious intention is all that really matters at the end of the day and I think it's pretty clear they intended time to be linear.

Its fun to theorize but you can't just rewrite what the writers intended and claim it as fact. Well you can I suppose but its no more cannon than some random Kirk/Spock slash fanfic written by a bored housewife is cannon to Star Trek.

[Reply #41 on:]

a brand new iteration of the same timeline.

This sounds awfully similar to a new universe to me.

It is awfully similar. Lead and gold are awfully similar, without being the same thing.

So once time restarts, Farnsworth needs to kill Hitler again, otherwise the record plays normally (meaning Hitler is born, lives, and is killed by the one man who is famous today for killing Hitler; Hitler).

I'll give you a better analogy for what you're describing than the record player one... or at least a niche analogy that appeals more to me.

Other than your use of predetermination (I see what you tried to sneak in there), this works, I guess. If that appeals to you more and helps you to visualize what I'm talking about, then yes. It's like putting your finger on Sonic to kill a hedgehog. The hedgehog doesn't stay dead, and you don't need to load a new cartridge each time to get an identical hedgehog. He comes back when time restarts after the end. Like a little blue Jesus.

Nah this still doesn't work. It's not that the effects should last, but rather that, if this is the same universe, The Professor should exist doing his own actions from past goes round.

So to take assassinating Hitler as our example. It's not that Professor should boot up a new reset of the universe and find Hitler assassinated in it. It's that, if this is the same universe, his previous self should be going round it concurrently with his current self and his previous self should shoot Hitler like he did last time independently of anything the current Professor does short of stopping his past self from taking that action.

The Professor's shot at Hitler, the kidnapping of Santa, the assassination of Eleanor Roosevelt, all of it is an impermanent overlay upon the timeline. These actions taken while displaced in time were not committed by individuals who had used the time code (an item that seems to effect permanent change within the timeline by the user), but by persons who were acting outside of the natural sequence of events (assuming based on the existence of the predestination paradox in RTEW that this is a natural event within the timeline and will hold true across repeated iterations of the universe). This would mean that the entire timeclip sequence of kidnapping Robot Santa and killing him does not hold true across repeated iterations of the universe but that due to events naturally culminating in it happening within one iterative cycle (the one that Farnsworth backs into), it happens in every cycle independantly of other cycles.

You can thus think of everything that the time travelers do in their odyssey during TLPJF as only being in effect during the specific iteration of the universe they are experiencing at that time.

Plus the NUMEROUS indications the writers gave us in TLPJF that these were new universes, ranging from universe 3 being approximately 10 feet lower than universe 1 through to the Professor flat-out calling it a new universe.

This is the weakest possible argument.

I think the obvious intention of the people making something is the strongest argument, personally -- but I suppose you must adhere to Roland Barthes' Death of the Author theory.

Get Matt Groening, David X Cohen and Ken Keeler (I can't be bothered to look up the credited writer so I'm just assuming it was him) on record as saying their intent was to show a single linear sequence of deterministic universes and I'll agree with you on this. On all of it. I'll give up saying that the timeline is a circle. But you need to get those three on record as saying this was their clear intent (and that I'm clearly braindead for not recognising it) before I'll agree. I don't think it's an obvious intent, especially given the commentaries for Season 6A and the other little tidbits we've had saying they don't care as long as (a) they told the story they wanted to and (b) it got the fans scratching their heads.

And the only other of your "numerous" examples you care to mention

Because we had this discussion ten years ago and it was just as stupid back then.

So those examples should be easy for you to find and demonstrate then.

I figured I'd try to trim this new iteration of it down a bit -- but I suppose you probably think this is literally the same conversation we had ten years ago looping round again as opposed to us having a brand new iteration of the same one.

I'd say this is a continuation rather than a loop. The conversation merely took a decade-long hiatus. Obviously I don't feel that time is a circle in our real universe that we inhabit with our meat selves.

But what's portrayed in the show - it's a circle.

I think the obvious intention of the people making something is the strongest argument, personally -- but I suppose you must adhere to Roland Barthes' Death of the Author theory.

Yeah, I agree with this. The writer's obvious intention is all that really matters at the end of the day and I think it's pretty clear they intended time to be linear.

Its fun to theorize but you can't just rewrite what the writers intended and claim it as fact. Well you can I suppose but its no more cannon than some random Kirk/Spock slash fanfic written by a bored housewife is cannon to Star Trek.

At the end of the day, Kirk/Spock is canon, funnily enough. Spock loves Kirk. Kirk loves Spock. It's confirmed in the canon novelization of ST:TMP and heavily implied across multiple episodes of ST:TOS. They love each other deeply. An argument can be had about whether this is sexual, transcends sexuality, asexual, platonic, or just two guys being bonded/fused at the soul (I believe that's the English translation of the Vulcan words Spock uses to describe Kirk) in a totally-no-homo way. But canon says they love each other as deeply as two individuals can. And since if it wasn't for bored housewives writing slash fics Star Trek would only ever have been ST:TOS, you should probably just be both quiet and grateful on that topic.

As for the "obvious intention of the writers", I think it's ambiguous at best. What's shown on screen over the course of the series is definitely a circular timeline with some assorted fuckery like RTEW and TWOF and BBS making a mess of the surface.

It's clearly not an infinitely branching universe subject to determinism (and we know that parallel realities are spawned by it, giving us the multiverse glimpsed in TFP, so there's no determinism at play).

We also know that some of that assorted level fuckery (i.e; the examples I listed) are definitely baked in, so we're getting a quasi-deterministic macro scale effect from some force (temporal inertia) keeping the sequence of events to roughly a set overall pattern. Which demonstrates that we have a universe here that operates as a limited-scope set of quantum choices, meaning that all potential multiverse possibilities are a finite rather than infinite set, showing us independently that this is not a branched timeline.

And there's a reasonable argument to be made in favor of this being an interpretation through not-inconsiderable artistic licence of the idea that spacetime is in fact subject to a phenomenon known as curvature.

The previous interactions I've had with you in particular have really just torpedoed any chance you had of me treating your two cents as though it has any credibility at all though, and this isn't really a response to you so much as addressing your comments so that anybody else reading the thread doesn't think I'm ignoring them or didn't see them.

This obviously doesn't explain Santa being evil in the red universes, since there was no Professor to go back in time, but I honestly think that's just a plot hole.

It has internal consistency and is not a plot hole as long as the timeline is curved and we're dealing with a single universe. Trace your finger around the outside of a circle (see the diagram below). You can keep doing it forever, but even if you reverse direction for a while revolution you've only changed the direction. It's a new iteration of the same circle. So... Maybe this will help?

Note that the timeship from the yellow track does not land on the blue track. The yellow track is over and done, and the occupants of the timeship from the red track have already landed on the green track. Additionally, keep in mind that these are all the same track, and it should (I hope) make more sense.

I hope it clarifies what I'm trying to say a little, and demonstrates just how the CT model is meant to operate. Even if it's just to illustrate that either the exclusion principle explains the apparent relative displacement of the timeship or that spacetime is ten feet lower at the big bang than the end of time, which I think is its own hilarious joke. Because it's really stupid, but also pretty funny, and is not something that we can ascribe to the intention of the writers - but certainly both fits, and serves as a rationale that is in character for the Futuramaverse.

[Reply #42 on:]

The previous interactions I've had with you in particular have really just torpedoed any chance you had of me treating your two cents as though it has any credibility at all though, and this isn't really a response to you so much as addressing your comments so that anybody else reading the thread doesn't think I'm ignoring them or didn't see them.

So you literally have to state you are giving me the cold shoulder over some disagreement we had ages ago , you are as bad as my wife.

You shouldn't let disagreements on other topics cloud your opinion on completely unrelated ones.

Seriously, it's not healthy to hold grudges, let it go, you'll live longer.

[Reply #43 on:]

It has internal consistency and is not a plot hole as long as the timeline is curved and we're dealing with a single universe.

That's a big assumption to make especially since Hubert explicitly states that they're in a new universe multiple times. Sure, he was making a theory simply based on his observation of the new big bang, and there's a chance he was wrong. But there's nothing suggesting he actually was wrong. I don't believe the word "timeline" was ever used; only universe. It dies a tragic heat-death and  then re-emerges as an identical duplicate. Repeat repeat repeat.

I do like your theory though, especially since the universes seen in "The Farnsworth Parabox" (which are undeniably different universes) clearly operate under different rules, since they're only accessible through boxes.

[Reply #44 on:]

He says it's a "new universe" once, after the big bang. He then implies it is a new universe just before The Squish. The rest of the time, he's treating the whole thing in a manner that suggests he's coming around to the idea that time is a circle. He says things like "taking the scenic route" and "bring her around again", and treats each iteration he's in as though it isn't any different than the iteration he's left behind.

There's also the issue I referred to in another post of semantics. If it's a new iteration of the same universe, it is functionally equivalent to a "new universe". And if it's functionally equivalent, why wouldn't he say what it looks like is happening (he says "it appears that") as a preliminary observation rather than knowing somehow that what's happening is time restarting from the beginning?

It's also not as if there's nothing suggesting he's wrong.

I mean, the observation relating to the cycles that you were willing to write off as a plot hole counts, as does the lack of deterministic character to the reality they inhabit, and this is supported by parallel universe's existing as discrete entities, which ties in nicely with timelines neither branching nor being impossible to return to a previous state when messed with, supported further by the existence of causal loops/predestination paradoxes within the single timeline.

That's rather compelling evidence that there's no linear sequence, and we're looking at a single, curved, timeline that resets and replays over and over.

I'll respond to the discussion taking place in the Infosphere thread on this topic here.

It's impossible to create a definitive, consistent model of time-travel from episode to episode of Futurama because it's clear as day that the writers' intention has differed from episode to episode and they care less about continuity than we do.

That doesn't mean we can't take what we know and apply it to what we see.

I don't see why different methods of time-travel can't behave differently and have different outcomes. Why do you feel that they all need to be unified? Surely the time-code is allowed to behave completely differently to drinking opal essence or to the Professor's time machine? They even specify that it's a "paradox-correcting time-code" which implies that it behaves differently to other methods of time travel.

As I've said before, we see different methods of time travel, but the mechanics of time and therefore the overall mechanics of time travel in the Futuramaverse are seperate from the methods, and follow an internally consistent model when we take the universe as being on a circular timeline.

Generally speaking, it's easy to wave it away as the result of different methods of time-travel behaving in different ways, but "Decision 3012" operates entirely different than "Bender's Big Score" despite re-using the universal time-code and it comes down to bad continuity because the writers favoured an easy gag ending over making things make sense.

Annoyingly, it actually makes perfect sense. I believe I covered that in the thread for the episode. It's hardly worth factoring into a conversation regarding the validity of the cyclical time model though, since it takes place within a single iteration of the universe.

I'm going to look up your explanation now but surely it doesn't make sense purely on the grounds that it's entirely inconsistent with how the time-code has behaved in the past?

I thought it was consistent once I'd finished the time travel explanation. I haven't seen the episode since I originally watched it. I'll take your word for it that there's some goof with the time code. But the overall mechanics seemed to hold up, so in the absence of any willingness to re-watch the episode itself, I'm going to say that if there's a goof, it's a goof, and it's a goof with the time code, and it's a goof within the course of a single iteration of the universe, and therefore has little relevance to the cyclical model.

It's incredibly apparent what the intent of "The Late Philip J. Fry" is an it's that the characters enter into a brand new universe and that, in the world of Futurama, things follow a vaguely deterministic model and will arrive at more or less the same place when given the same input.

It's very much apparent from my POV that there was no particular intent with regard to this and that the writers threw the characters forward past the heat death of the universe into the big bang without really caring how or why since it wasn't a functional component of the story.

I'd love someone to ask David X. Cohen about this one day so we can get a definitive answer, but between The Professor's "We appear to be in a new identical universe" comment and the "Apparently this universe is about ten feet lower" comments alone, I think it's incredibly obvious what the intent was. There are other small hints here and there though. Fry saying "He's dead now" referring to his alternate self for instance.

"That's the old Fry. He's dead now."

Yeah, that was indeed the old Fry. It was him, just the him before his odyssey. That can't really be taken to mean that the intent was to imply the CU model. And it's clear that your reasoning for the CU hangs on what seem to me to be statements that merely represent the Professor's observations in the absence of hard data, and are therefore neither definitive canon-makers nor markers of the writers' intent. Although it does show that they thought about whether Farnsworth would be able at that point to deduce that the Futuramaverse's timeline is a loop and decided to simply go with what he'd be able to confirm from mere observation. Which shows he's not a bad scientist.

You just really like the idea that you've battened onto like a barnacle, despite it being fundamentally incorrect. It's easy enough for you to assimilate and you're willing to overlook the inconsistencies (or even say that they're meant to be present). You like it, so you're championing it.

I could say the exact same thing about you.

You could, but you'd be wrong. I've tested the idea of CT against the known data, done the work to figure out how it fits and what would have to be true or untrue to support it, and I don't necessarily like it, but it works. And in the absence of anything that works as well (and I maintain for all the reasons I've given several times over now, that CU doesn't work), I have to go with the one that works.

Futurama doesn't take place in reality. It doesn't have to adhere to real-world science. It frequently doesn't.

I never said that it did. Our universe probably doesn't work that way. I merely pointed out that the Futuramaverse is demonstrated to be non-deterministic. Therefore your response is not of consequence to the argument (since you have repeatedly demonstrated ignorance of the meaning of deterministic vs. non-deterministic realities, and are not addressing either this or the clearly nondeterministic nature of the Futuramaverse with it).

There are numerous hints that this is what they intend but the most blatant is when The Professor says "Apparently this new universe is about 10 feet lower than our old one".

It's a joke that resolves the "paradox" (not actually a paradox whether it's CU or CT in effect, but the duplicates would still be subject to the doom field that was revealed in BBS to govern the fate of time travel duplicates and resolve these issues).

But like you say, there's no actual paradox here. There's no need for this to happen or go this way whatsoever. But The Professor clearly calls it "THIS universe" implying it's a different universe and he describes it as being different to their universe and what we see backs up what he says. The joke of it would have worked exactly as well if he'd said "Apparently we reentered the universe about 10 feet higher than we were before". He doesn't. That shows the writers' intent.

The Professor is simply continuing with the application his earlier hypothesis based purely on the available information to him, please see my comments regarding that.

He does not "describe the universe" as being "different". In fact this is his second reference to the reborn universe, and the final one. The first reference called out that it seems to be exactly identical.

The joke could well have been simply intended to be (and I know this isn't the case, this is a hypothetical example based on the writers intending things one way or the other, which they didn't), that the big bang is ten feet below the end of time, which is funny because it's absurd.

You're ascribing a lot of specific intent to a very small number of words (and I'm not; I'm assuming the absence of concrete intention, based on information from the commentaries).

It is quite interesting how often Futurama adheres to a deterministic outcome as opposed to a timeline-splitting one, actually. The method of time-travel seems to be key.

A deterministic universe would be the same thing as one in which the timeline splits, by the way. This would render a timeclip like the one featured in TWOF or the multiples in BBS impossible.

Surely, the multiples in BBS would only be impossible from the perspective of the original timeline? And nothing says we're watching the original timeline.

What I said was the deterministic model would necessitate timeline splitting. As in, duplicates would not be present in the original branch of the timeline and we would necessarily be watching the "branched" timeline to see a duplicate, since the time traveler has vanished and no longer exists from the perspective of their original, deterministic, timeline, and no changes can be made to it. So the introduction of particles which have been injected from another point in time constitute an alteration that splits the timeline into two distinct and separate deterministic pathways, with the traveler having crossed from their original pathway into the branched universe.

It seems like you're not actually getting what I mean. I don't know if this represents a failure to explain myself or a fundamental deficiency of some kind on your part.

Regardless of the method of time travel, the mechanics must remain consistent.

Why? If they manipulate the universe in different ways, surely the outcome can also be different.

No. The manipulation of spacetime or some other property of reality allows for time travel. This may clearly be accomplished in diverse ways. The consequences of said travel via said method must maintain consistency within the physical universe, for the duration of that particular iteration of the universe. So it doesn't matter if you travel by magic axe or by time capsule, as long as you're within the same iteration of the universe, what you do when you get to your destination along that timeline will have the same effect.

For example, if you travel by wish-granting genie back a thousand years to kill King Bumpits so you can replace him and enjoy his fabulous wealth, the effect of your trip would be no different than if you'd made that trip using a vortex manipulator. Assuming you succeed, King Bumpits is dead. He's no less dead for the method of travel you used, because the effects of your actions are logically consistent. If you stick a sword through him, he dies. Whether or not you used a time machine or a wish or some other method to get there to put the sword into him, the result of putting the sword into him is that he's dead. And now you can take over King Bumpits' role in history and spend all that money on making sure that nobody can put a sword through you.

"Time Keeps on Slipping" doesn't feature time travel that can affect the past in any way so it's skippable.

TKOS doesn't feature time travel at all, in fact. Time progresses normally, it's just that the crew don't have any memory of what's happening in the gaps due to the chronitons that have been unleashed by destabilizing the nebula.

Nope. It absolutely is time-travel. Remember: "Isolated spots are jumping by years at a time". In fact, there's an implication that every time-skip is somewhat specific to an area. This means that some areas (and the characters in them) are jumping forwards through time while others aren't, meaning that they've travelled through time relative to those other spots. "Stupid senior citizens" to "I deserve free money!" -- that character has travelled decades forwards relative to the Planet Express crew for example.

Not from the perspective of the physical matter that they're made of. That's gone through time at the usual rate, and aged accordingly. They've moved at an accelerated rate relative to the PX crew because time is moving unevenly in general throughout the universe. They haven't travelled in time any more than we're all travelling through time at one second per second from our own frame of reference.

Even more apparent with the total lack of butterfly effect from the killing of Eleanor Roosevelt.

We don't see the lack of any ripple effect though. And we also don't see how quickly/easily things just sort of shake out the way they do despite Roosevelt's death (nor do we know that she died at any point before she'd done whatever she did that was of truly historical importance and would not have been done by anybody else. Farnsworth may have shot her on or near to her deathbed).

We absolutely do see a lack of any ripple effect in so far as the characters return to a world that is, as far as we can tell, identical to the previous one they left (apart from being 10 feet lower -- and to the left as you pointed out). I'm not saying it's impossible that a ripple effect happened. But I am saying that we see absolutely no evidence of it in the episode and no changes to the universe we know unless you want to start pulling up continuity errors as proof.

I don't think that you can claim a lack of ripple effect across a thousand years of history when we haven't seen the circumstances of her death, or the years immediately following. See my other post in response to Extrablood - we see no evidence of either it, or it's lack, and this is not in contradiction to chaos theory or the butterfly effect.

"All the Presidents' Heads" features opal essence fuelled time-travel, revealed to be the methodology for keeping the heads in jars alive in the show as well. This method allows for changes to be made that have major ramifications for the future, though even then, you can argue that the universe is fairly deterministic.

You keep using that word. I do not think you know what it means.

Yes, it's apparent that you're using a hard-science definition whereas I was using the more philosophical definition -- both of which are perfectly valid definitions for the record.

Determinism in a scientific capacity is what we're talking about here, and you can't use the two definitions interchangeably without eternally corrupting the meaning of what you're saying to the point where it's nonsensical.

The Futuramaverse is nondeterministic. Time doesn't split or branch. It's a circle with an overall general sort of pattern to the sequential events occurring along it, and this is a contributing factor to the universe having little bits of temporal noise from one iteration to another. This does not constitute an argument in favor of a deterministic universe, as it is merely the application of quasi-determinism, which is the emergent illusion of potential determinism thanks to the general lie of probability within a system governed by indetermistic, chaotic, mathematics at a quantum level.

"Decision 3012" features the return of the paradox-correcting time-code. In what is basically just horrific continuity, they opt for the time travel creating a paradox that writes itself out of ever happening in a way that doesn't really make any sense until you use your headcanon to explain... "Well, the time-code was 'overloaded' this time and simply killing Travers wasn't going to fix things so it just reset the timeline but in a way whereby Bender won't now rise up kill all humans because that would cause this to happen all over again"... Not their best work.

It does make sense. I don't personally like it, but it's logically consistent from within the rules that it sets for itself. No, it's not their best work, but it's also not a continuity goof so much as a poor narrative decision.

It's inconsistent in so far as the time-code has never behaved like that before, though. In every previous instance of it paradox-correcting, it's manipulated "fate" to cause characters to die using objects in the vicinity. The doom field causes their doom. Whereas in "Decision 3012", it just literally erases them from space and time and changes things like an artist with a giant pencil and an eraser in a Daffy Duck cartoon. The doom here threatens to wipe you from existence. If it had operated as it did in previous instances, Travers would have died from the microphone on his podium exploding and then Nixon would have found some loophole to become president such as managing to get hired as Travers' Vice President before his death.

Going to have to agree with you, I guess. It's sloppy writing. Doesn't invalidate anything else, but I guess it does represent a goof (although I still maintain that it's more of a poor narrative choice than an indicator of anything else).

"Meanwhile" features time-travel repeatedly but only 10 seconds into the past. There don't seem to be any ramifications from things like time-travel duplicates, etc, here. They then end up freezing time and travelling through that one moment forever. No major issues to the timeline.

There are no time-travel duplicates because they're not travelling ten seconds into the past, they're essentially resetting them. That last ten seconds didn't happen, but you remember how it could have turned out. Like the Omega 13 in Galaxy Quest.

There are time-travel duplicates though. Fry and Bender use it to duplicate numerous diamonds in the jewellery store.

This made me go back and re-watch the appropriate fifteen seconds of the episode. Fry and Bender are both within the radius of the device, which preserves the consequences of their actions - the last ten seconds did happen for the individuals in the blue sphere, per the Professor's explanation as he robbed Zoidberg in the previous scene. If you use the device, those last ten seconds happened for you, so I guess I fucked up here by likening it to the Omega 13 device. It's a little different.

See my post in the episode's thread for a deeper dive on this given the continuity issue about who would have made Santa evil in the show's original universe combined with the fact that Leela of universe 1 gave a different explanation for why Santa is evil in the first place.

The original explanation in Xmas Story (delivered by Farnsworth) was "Due to a programming error, Santa's standards were set too high". This episode would appear to suggest that Farnsworth is the responsible party, and that he always was the responsible party. It's a classic predestination paradox - Farnsworth wouldn't have messed with Santa if Santa wasn't evil, and Santa wouldn't be evil if he hadn't been messed with.

Flipping the robot's good/evil switch to "evil" isn't a programming error and it isn't Robot Santa's standard being set too high so that he judges everyone to be naughty. That's the continuity issue here.

No disagreements - Farnsworth was wrong. But my point was that "Leela's explanation" for why Santa was evil wasn't necessarily what we should be listening to. Anybody who's tried to explain it before this episode has necessarily been wrong - not necessarily a continuity goof so much as folks extrapolating from incomplete information. Which is a thing we do a lot here. This entire discussion arose due to extrapolation from incomplete information.

A parallel reality or alternate universe is not the same as a branching timeline, and I think that's ultimately what's in store: parallel realities where quantum choices were otherwise than in our core reality (not unlike TFP). It'll represent an exploration of possibilities rather than modifications to the timeline of the show. Showing us what could have been rather than what was.

Actually, I think you're probably right about this.

No. Stop it. You're not allowed to agree with me. You'll cause me to question my entire reality.

That's what time-travel is though. Something moving through the flow of time at a different rate to everything else.

Then everything is time travelling constantly thanks to speed, mass, and local gravitational influences not being consistent within Earth's atmosphere, nevermind across the universe.

Would you say that Interstellar, for instance, isn't a time-travel movie because it only shows characters travelling forwards in time relative to other characters? Relativism is absolutely a form of time-travel.

No, I wouldn't. I'd say that's not precisely what it shows, and that it fundamentally misapplies a few scientific principles, but it's definitely about time travel. It's also a highly specific case that isn't quite the same as the situation in TKOS.

But honestly, I don't think that much of this is productive with regard to the original discussion, which was the CT model vs. the CU model. Your argument in favor of CU appears to hang on a very specific interpretation of the Professor's words following the big bang, and has several flaws (such as reliance on principles shown to be absent within the show's universe), additionally your argument in the face of this appears to hang on the lack of any necessity for time travel to have the dame general principles governing the method of moving through time, which is not the same as the universal framework within which the time travel is happening.

I have postulated the CT hypothesis based on internal consistency with as much of the Futuramaverse as possible, including adherence to concepts shown to operate within the Futuramaverse. Within the proposed framework this represents, all of the various methods of time travel may operate without invalidating this overall model.

In the absence of a confirmed concrete intention from the writers, and in the presence of a confirmed intent to simply tell the story and let the audience figure it out, I would say that the CT model is closer to how the universe and the timeline it occupies must by necessity work within the Futuramaverse.

Therefore, the CU model should be considered flawed and superseded in much the same way that we consider the idea that the Earth is flat and carried through space on the back of a traveling menagerie flawed and superseded.

[Reply #45 on:]

I guess the doublepost is justified in this event... from the Infosphere thread, I'll continue since further responses were inappropriately placed there.

Time is progressing normally, i.e.; forwards. Time is progressing normally, i.e.; in logical sequence. It's happening at different rates in different regions, and at least some (if not all) people appear to retain little to no memory of the portions that are being speedrun behind the scenes. But it's a normal, forward, sequential, cause-and-effect progression and nobody is "travelling through time" by skipping parts out (they just don't remember living through them) or popping backwards to fiddle with things.

I'd agree it probably doesn't count as time travel but it does involve time manipulation so I wouldn't say time is progressing normally.

Time is not being manipulated any more than the sea level rising as Earth warms is an intentional manipulation. A regional distortion is affecting the properties of matter subject to temporal or entropic progression in various, scattered, areas of the cosmos due to the unforseen consequences of over-eager resource harvesting. The observer sees a temporal pseudoshift that is in fact not occurring, but appears to do so because portions of spacetime are subject to a temporal lensing effect that hides the regular passage of time from observation when viewed from within the scope of human dimensional constraints.

Simple. See?

That's where the name comes from, something as subtle as the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil could trigger a tornado in Texas.

This is a common misunderstanding of the name and the phenomenon it describes.

I'm aware of the origin, the quote above was a question poised by the meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. Not sure how that is a misunderstanding since its a direct quote from the guy.

You can quote somebody without understanding them pretty easily. As evidenced by this:

I know he is not literally saying a butterfly flapping its wings will directly cause a tornado but that that its a methaphor for how small changes or actions can eventually cascade into significant ones.

The point made by Lorenz (thanks for remembering the name, I always forget it for some reason) was that a small effect may be amplified in a complex system. The conclusion of the study he conducted was that you don't know what effect something may have on a complex system, be it even the smallest variable. It may have zero effect, being drowned out by a more highly scaled and structured set of variables or events that prevent the amplification of the lower-order signal.

Or it may become amplified, and dominate the behaviours of the system entirely until the outcome of the event or the end product of the variable was one impossible to predict from the initial conditions due to the nonlinear nature of said amplification.

And you're not quoting Lorenz. You're not even paraphrasing him. His original statement was about seagulls, and somebody invited him to present his findings at a talk somewhere, so he asked for a punchier title than that of the first paper he'd published. Which was something like Deterministic Flow. The venue came up with the question "Does a butterfly in Brazil cause a tornado in Texas?" (and these titles aren't direct quotes, they're something similar enough because my memory isn't 100% reliable. But if I go look them up after I've typed this out, they're probably pretty damn close).

As to the metaphor, Lorenz himself said at his talk that he didn't want people to interpret his findings that way - he took pains to emphasize the unknowability of whether a simple action has a significant ripple effect in its overall consequences. His metaphor was that if an event like a seagull or butterfly causing a small, localized, atmospheric disturbance in an otherwise calm area occurs, the result of amplification (which is not a process than necessarily will occur, but may) be that a storm develops from the overall instability generated from that amplification.

Lorenz is also not the only contributor to chaos theory as a branch of mathematics, and many others have also pointed out (Benjamin Franklin included) that sometimes history is made by the smallest action and sometimes such actions have absolutely no practical consequence.

In reality if you made any change to the timeline 1000 years prior, even a tiny one then every single person that exists 1000 years later will be replaced by an entirely different set of people

The whole point of the butterfly effect is in fact that you can't know that and that there may be zero or close to zero effect stemming from your overall change.

I had meant to use the qualifier "could" in the above when talking about tiny changes, sorry English isn't my 1st language.

Regardless though, there absolutely would not be zero effect stemming from shooting Eleanor Roosevelt, that would with absolute certainty change history. Shooting anyone would, they don't have to be important.

At what point would she have to be shot to erase her contribution to history? She lived from the 1880s to the 1960s, and was active in politics up until her death. But if she'd been shot a day before she'd otherwise have died? A week? Even a year? She wouldn't have chaired the national women's group she ran during the Kennedy administration in that case. But she didn't chair it the entire time it ran either. She died before it wrapped up. Her contributions to politics could easily have been picked up by somebody else during that time, and she was a notable person on the national and international stage. But her death would largely be a footnote.

The broad events in society that she may or may not have precipitated would then be attributed to somebody else - much like the hypothetical scenario of Nixon's assassination in  the 1970s being successful. If Nixon had died at that point, a replacement (Spiro Agnew) would have stepped in and continued his policies. There might then have been a response in the form of upping security around the president, but it would not be a major change to history.

And even assuming that Roosevelt's death was earlier in life - does it necessarily need to be a major change to history? Would it have been a major change if Hitler or Churchill was assassinated? Or would somebody else have stepped in and done more-or-less the same, and not had much beyond a small effect localized on those closest to them? I mean, assassinating Churchill in 1947 certainly would not have had an effect on the way that the Partition of India was conducted that same year. Everybody born in 1948 in Afghanistan would have an extremely low probability of not being born as a consequence of this event.

Ripples from an event may be small. May be innocuous. May be unnoticable. Or they may change everything. Perhaps assassinating Churchill in 1947 would have led to a nuclear exchange between America and China in 1997. You don't know. I don't know. Nobody can know. You can't even calculate the answer, because there are so many other small variables in between that could cause Churchill's death's consequences to either be magnified or be inconsequential.

The fallout from Eleanor Roosevelt's death is unknowable, and we don't even know if she was killed. Maybe she was winged and President Roosevelt took the brunt of the Professor's laser blast, dying himself. Maybe that made things a little more challenging for Lee Harvey Oswald, necessitating some other time traveller's assistance from a small and verdant hillock nearby. Otherwise the moon landings might not have happened. Or maybe Roosevelt's death wouldn't have changed anything about the Kennedy assassination.

Do you have a time machine or a computer capable of simulating this? No. You don't. So you can postulate all that you like, but you do not know that the hypothetical curtailment of the life of Eleanor Roosevelt would have had any effect on the birth of the PX crew or the course of significant world events as they pertain to the status quo of the year 3000.

Hell, even completely missing would most likely cause a ripple effect as trillions of air molecules would be displaced which cascade and eventually lead to a change in weather patterns and in turn cause a change to human behavour and in turn a change in mating behaviour which in turn will result in completely different people being born.

Cool fanfic. Write it. Not really anything you can speak with any certainty about though, since the intended thrust of the butterfly effect is that this has some chance of happening, but is not a certainty. The idea is that it has a non-zero chance of occurring, but that a lot of other small things need to line up precisely between this action and the hypothetical endpoint.

And we don't have any idea about the state of that alignment. Speculate all you like about the hypothetical ripples from this or any other action - you don't know if they are trivial or if they are important, and you can never know because you can't even simulate it with a computer capable of predicting the path of every particle in the universe without an approximate 50% margin of error. Because this is not a deterministic universe, which is one of the underpinnings of chaos theory.

So the fact that all the PE crew were still born is proof of a lack of a ripple effect.

It really isn't. See above.

Not sure I follow you here. You are saying there could be a ripple yet the crew would all still have been born?

Quite. Just as undersea tremors happening in the Pacific ocean failed for many millennia to disrupt and destroy the Atlantic Gulf Stream, a ripple may make itself felt for a long time in faraway places, or it may not. If I went back in time and killed your grandfather's cousin when he was a child, this might result in your parents not being born. It might result in no effect on their conception and birth, but may result in your parents not producing you. It might have no effect on any of those things, but may stop you when told as an anecdote from going out late at night by yourself just in case you're murdered by a time traveler. Which could prevent you from meeting a future romantic partner.

Or it could result in World War III, the discovery of antigravity, the invention of Spluffti, or the widespread societal adoption of general awareness of temporal paradoxes and how to avoid being knifed in the dark by somebody looking to cause one. Who knows?

Killing anybody in history could have a tiny, inconsequential effect on everything. Or a massive one. And once again, you do not know which. Somewhere, a butterfly flaps in a thunderstorm that's already ongoing. Does this cause any effect? Probably not. The storm still happens, and an infinite number of potential realities that follow the storm all proceed functionally identically until a different event causes more significant divergence. Possibly another butterfly in another storm. Possibly a butterfly landing on a particularly sensitive missile launch button.

Eitherway I disagree, shooting Eleanor Roosevelt would easily be more than enough of a change to guarantee none of the PE crew are born, maybe Nixon and a few other heads from the 20th century would have survived but thats about it.

Yeah, no. The butterfly effect doesn't guarantee this. This is just you deciding to make up your own alternative history. And don't let me stop you from writing an extremely detailed and entertaining timeline in which this takes place. But it's not an argument in favor of either determinism or a cyclic universal model for the Futuramaverse.

Anyways the fact that Futurama just chooses to mostly ignore the butterfly effect doesn't really prove which time model is correct.

The fact that like Schrodinger's cat and Einstein's equations, the Butterfly Effect is chronically misunderstood among the general population, contributing to a general Dunning-Kruger effect among laypersons when it comes to confidently describing complex scientific ideas incorrectly doesn't really mean that you can expect to use said terms when discussing them with scientists and not be told that you're wrong.

I may just be a simple layperson but if you think there is a chance shooting Eleanor Roosevelt would cause no ripple then I can confidently say its you who is wrong and maybe you don't understand the butterfly effect as well as you think.

I can confidently say that I have understood the point as Lorenz intended it, and that I understand to some degree the effects of nonlinear dynamics and ripple effects in complex systems. I have used an understanding of these concepts on a professional basis in the last decade to contribute meaningfully to an enterprise that has had global repercussions. The point I'm attempting to ram home is that as a layperson you have apparently made the very common mistake of assuming that the butterfly effect is some kind of guarantor of chaos rather than the herald of its potential.

As a butterfly scientist myself I have to agree shooting Eleanor would have caused a ripple.

I'd no idea you had an interest in lepidoptery! You should have said something sooner and perhaps we'd have discovered something to discuss in a friendlier manner. I've been taking a lot of photographs of the butterflies in my area over the last few weeks, since this summer has produced some glorious specimens (and I'd rather take a photo than pin one to some cardboard).

The Eastern Swallowtails have been particularly resplendent near to me, and I've noticed that there have been a couple of Satyrs (although actually getting a shot of one has eluded me so far) around. Which was exciting, as I hadn't actually seen one myself until this year.

Sadly, this is perhaps the only thing we have any potential for agreement on.

Even if she survived the shot the idea that she would just go about her day and not act any different is pretty funny.

Theodore: By Gawd Eleanor, what's all the blood dripping out of you? What happened?
Eleanor: Some random old man appeared out of thin air in a flying carriage contraption and shot me but its fine.
Theodore: But there is blood everywhere, you sure you are ok?
Eleanor: Its just a flesh wound, hurts a bit alright but I'm not going to let it get me down and ruin my day so I will continue to do everything exactly as I would have as if I hadn't been shot, otherwise the commies win.

I did not postulate anything of the sort. You're attempting to construct some sort of person-shaped thing, out of flimsy material resembling hay. See my response to Extrablood. I don't think this is worth more of my time, TBH. If you want to talk about butterflies, you'll find me genuinely eager to do so. But as I've said and as you yourself made clear, your credibility with regard to scientific understanding (allowing for a potential exclusion in the case of lepidoptery which has yet to be demonstrated) is flimsier than a wet sheet of single-ply toilet paper in a butterfly-orchestrated typhoon.

[Reply #46 on:]

At what point would she have to be shot to erase her contribution to history? She lived from the 1880s to the 1960s, and was active in politics up until her death. But if she'd been shot a day before she'd otherwise have died? A week? Even a year? She wouldn't have chaired the national women's group she ran during the Kennedy administration in that case. But she didn't chair it the entire time it ran either. She died before it wrapped up. Her contributions to politics could easily have been picked up by somebody else during that time, and she was a notable person on the national and international stage. But her death would largely be a footnote.

The broad events in society that she may or may not have precipitated would then be attributed to somebody else - much like the hypothetical scenario of Nixon's assassination in  the 1970s being successful. If Nixon had died at that point, a replacement (Spiro Agnew) would have stepped in and continued his policies. There might then have been a response in the form of upping security around the president, but it would not be a major change to history.

And even assuming that Roosevelt's death was earlier in life - does it necessarily need to be a major change to history? Would it have been a major change if Hitler or Churchill was assassinated? Or would somebody else have stepped in and done more-or-less the same, and not had much beyond a small effect localized on those closest to them? I mean, assassinating Churchill in 1947 certainly would not have had an effect on the way that the Partition of India was conducted that same year. Everybody born in 1948 in Afghanistan would have an extremely low probability of not being born as a consequence of this event.

Ripples from an event may be small. May be innocuous. May be unnoticable. Or they may change everything. Perhaps assassinating Churchill in 1947 would have led to a nuclear exchange between America and China in 1997. You don't know. I don't know. Nobody can know. You can't even calculate the answer, because there are so many other small variables in between that could cause Churchill's death's consequences to either be magnified or be inconsequential.

The fallout from Eleanor Roosevelt's death is unknowable, and we don't even know if she was killed. Maybe she was winged and President Roosevelt took the brunt of the Professor's laser blast, dying himself. Maybe that made things a little more challenging for Lee Harvey Oswald, necessitating some other time traveller's assistance from a small and verdant hillock nearby. Otherwise the moon landings might not have happened. Or maybe Roosevelt's death wouldn't have changed anything about the Kennedy assassination.

I'm not arguing her death would have caused broad changes to historical events, there likely would have been little to none, at least on the shortrun. The point I'm making is that the odds of any one particular person being born is extremely sensitive to any change in the events leading up to it. The odds of the right sperm fertilizing your mother's egg is a about a 250 million to one shot alone. Every event has to line up perfectly for it to happen, change the timing of the deed or even the position and a different sperm likely wins the race and you were never born.

We are all connected and exert influence over each other even if it doesn't apperar to be the case. Your actions affect the actions of all the people you come into contact with which in turn affects all the people they come into contact with and so on. So the shooting of Eleanor Roosevelt or anyone else for that matter is going to change the behaviour of everyone who knew her and in turn have an affect on all the other people they come into contact with and continue to propigate. And its not just the intitial death which would cause waves of changes to the lives of those around her, every interaction she would have had but didn't would cause incalculable change.

There is no chance that all this disturbance doesn't have an effect on the extremely volitile sperm races going on everytime a person in conceived. Introduce a new person to the mix who shouldn't have been born (or vice versa) and it wouldn't take long to have a knockon effect and change the outcomes of all future conceptions.

Do you have a time machine or a computer capable of simulating this? No. You don't. So you can postulate all that you like, but you do not know that the hypothetical curtailment of the life of Eleanor Roosevelt would have had any effect on the birth of the PX crew or the course of significant world events as they pertain to the status quo of the year 3000.

I never mentioned a change to significant world events, its quite possible they all (or mostly) still happen, just with different players involved although it becomes less likely the futher forward in time you go.

Cool fanfic. Write it.

Thanks, maybe someday.

Not really anything you can speak with any certainty about though, since the intended thrust of the butterfly effect is that this has some chance of happening, but is not a certainty. The idea is that it has a non-zero chance of occurring, but that a lot of other small things need to line up precisely between this action and the hypothetical endpoint.

And we don't have any idea about the state of that alignment. Speculate all you like about the hypothetical ripples from this or any other action - you don't know if they are trivial or if they are important, and you can never know because you can't even simulate it with a computer capable of predicting the path of every particle in the universe without an approximate 50% margin of error. Because this is not a deterministic universe, which is one of the underpinnings of chaos theory.

An inconceivable numbers of things would have to line up perfectly in order for all the same people to be born despite the disturbance to the timeline (and continue to do so for 30 generations). In theory its possible but it would be ridiculously low probability, probably greater the the number of electrons in the universe to one.

Quite. Just as undersea tremors happening in the Pacific ocean failed for many millennia to disrupt and destroy the Atlantic Gulf Stream, a ripple may make itself felt for a long time in faraway places, or it may not. If I went back in time and killed your grandfather's cousin when he was a child, this might result in your parents not being born. It might result in no effect on their conception and birth, but may result in your parents not producing you. It might have no effect on any of those things, but may stop you when told as an anecdote from going out late at night by yourself just in case you're murdered by a time traveler. Which could prevent you from meeting a future romantic partner.

Or it could result in World War III, the discovery of antigravity, the invention of Spluffti, or the widespread societal adoption of general awareness of temporal paradoxes and how to avoid being knifed in the dark by somebody looking to cause one. Who knows?

Killing anybody in history could have a tiny, inconsequential effect on everything. Or a massive one. And once again, you do not know which. Somewhere, a butterfly flaps in a thunderstorm that's already ongoing. Does this cause any effect? Probably not. The storm still happens, and an infinite number of potential realities that follow the storm all proceed functionally identically until a different event causes more significant divergence. Possibly another butterfly in another storm. Possibly a butterfly landing on a particularly sensitive missile launch button.

Okay point taken, but Eleanor Roosevelt's death isn't isolated to some far away place, that will definitely have an impact on the people around her. It is well past the tipping point and the effects are only going to propigate.

[Reply #47 on:]

I'm not arguing her death would have caused broad changes to historical events, there likely would have been little to none, at least on the shortrun. The point I'm making is that the odds of any one particular person being born is extremely sensitive to any change in the events leading up to it.

An inconceivable numbers of things would have to line up perfectly in order for all the same people to be born despite the disturbance to the timeline (and continue to do so for 30 generations). In theory its possible but it would be ridiculously low probability, probably greater the the number of electrons in the universe to one.

Maybe less so than you think. You are vastly overestimating the propagation of ripples in history to assume that there would be effects on who is born a thousand years from now, for one simple reason:

For every quantum choice that is tipped another way by the ripple's epicentric event, there are Graham's Numbers of quantum choices that could be tipped back toward the "original" outcome. And the further the original outcome is away in time, the more chances that there are for the ripple not to have any effect on them.

The ripples left by assassinating somebody a thousand years in the past - particularly somebody likely to be unrelated to you - are unlikely to result in a sudden and potentially terminal lack of your birth in the present. It's not like killing your own father.

Then again, you seem to think that by giving your own father a slightly more sugary coffee half an hour before your conception, you could alter your own genetic makeup and effectively replace yourself with a different person completely by accident.

This is also unlikely: due to something I've touched on before, but in the opposite direction.

Nondeterministic quantum outcomes may result in deterministic-seeming events or patterns on the macro scale, simply by coming from starting conditions for which the eventual degree of divergence is trivial.

And the same effect also comes into play when we talk about nondeterminism applying to the macro world - down at the cellular to molecular level, a certain amount of disruption to the local environment has little effect. You can go swimming or cycling after breakfast - it won't change the timing of your impending bowel movement by as much as not exercising after your meal would. And if you had strong coffee, then not much is going to change the timing of your bowel movement by much at all, since that's the largest influence at work and has an effect which dwarfs other active effects.

Taking heroin would have an effect that might register at that point. But by eating a huge breakfast and drinking coffee, you've hit a bulls-eye that will cause the rest of the dominoes to fall like a house of cards. Checkmate. You're going to have to poop, you're going to have to poop soon because peristalsis just got a +3 to motivation, and your poop is going to be L O R G E because you just pigged out, and all of that volume is going to displace the same volume of food from the other end of your gut as it rear-ends it like an elderly truck driver with fogged up glasses hitting your Camry at a stoplight.

Not much gets to affect that. Your morning exercise routine might delay it if skipped, your death as you get rear-ended at a stoplight and are flung through the windscreen into the path of an oncoming dinosaur, sure. These might have impacts. But for all intents and purposes, you're going to take a dump on company time the moment you get to your workplace. What happens in most possible worlds has little effect on that event, since events with a large enough ripple or footprint are outliers.

So, your actions and the actions of others as you make your way to work have jack shit effect on your morning shit, Jack.

Taking into account both quasi-determinism at the macro scale and the huge time-displacement of the epicenter of the ripples, it is unlikely that an event already considered to be distant history at the time of Fry's birth would have affected Fry's birth, and increasingly less likely that it would affect any other of the PX crew if they're not a relative of the deceased.

Even if they are a relative, the story of how your great-great-great grandmother appeared to spontaneously combust whilst handing a report to President Kennedy one fine afternoon in the oval office is unlikely to affect the sexual position you attempt on the night that you conceive any of your children.

One would like to think. I suppose I don't know what your kinks are, and I guess I'm not here to shame you for them.

The odds of the right sperm fertilizing your mother's egg is a about a 250 million to one shot alone. Every event has to line up perfectly for it to happen, change the timing of the deed or even the position and a different sperm likely wins the race and you were never born.

If you were able to successfully change the conception of individuals by assassinating somebody completely unrelated to their conception, at a point far in advance of their conception, and in a manner extremely unlikely to have an impact on human copulation in general, you might stand a chance of making a change 1000 years down the line in this manner. But you're really overestimating the connectedness of events here. You're still thinking that the butterfly always causes a tornado, or that some significant change is always propagated by less consequential precursor actions.

As I've mentioned, the maths doesn't quite work that way. The butterfly stands a non-zero chance of affecting something in a manner that will be amplified by other events to cause a chaotic and unpredictable event down the line. Then again, you stand a non-zero chance of winning the powerball.

How many powerballs have you won lately, butterfly?

We are all connected and exert influence over each other even if it doesn't apperar to be the case. Your actions affect the actions of all the people you come into contact with which in turn affects all the people they come into contact with and so on.

Sure. But if, say, Hillary Clinton was shot on live TV tomorrow, it wouldn't affect my day much. Would affect my week even less. Would hardly be a blip in the month. Wouldn't affect how I plan to spend Xmas at all. It's probably going to affect Bill Clinton quite a bit, but Bill Clinton's actions would have to follow a hell of a causal chain to get to the point where they are affecting me.

Sure, it'll affect a lot of other people though. Yes, absolutely. There will be strong effects on those closest to her, and progressively weaker effects on those less connected.

It's probably not going to affect anybody in Canada or Japan being born thirty years from now. And that's in a highly connected world that has instant knowledge of every little potential ripple. Which the 1880s to the 1960s were some way behind being.

There is no chance that all this disturbance doesn't have an effect on the extremely volitile sperm races going on everytime a person in conceived.

You're really hung up on sperm, huh? Look, if Farnsworth had hung out of the window and tickled Fry's dad's balls around 9 months before Yancy was born, I'd say that you'd have a decent hypothetical argument for changing the DNA and perhaps personality of every member of Farnsworth's genetic lineage. But... ...taking into account the robustness of biological systems, the example of breakfast I gave earlier, and my comments regarding indeterminacy and scale, we're not talking about a change which is likely to have a direct effect on the particular variables in question.

Do you have a time machine or a computer capable of simulating this? No. You don't.

Cool fanfic. Write it.

Thanks, maybe someday.

Call it the Aneleanorically Undone Alternate Universe.

Okay point taken, but Eleanor Roosevelt's death isn't isolated to some far away place, that will definitely have an impact on the people around her. It is well past the tipping point and the effects are only going to propigate.

The propagation of said events if the assassination occurs after she's had all her children will be limited by the time the 30th Century rolls around. I'd argue that events stemming from it will be much more personally and keenly felt by a small circle of people close to her in the early to mid twentieth century than almost a millennium later.

[Reply #48 on:]

As a butterfly scientist myself I have to agree shooting Eleanor would have caused a ripple.

I'd no idea you had an interest in lepidoptery! You should have said something sooner and perhaps we'd have discovered something to discuss in a friendlier manner. I've been taking a lot of photographs of the butterflies in my area over the last few weeks, since this summer has produced some glorious specimens (and I'd rather take a photo than pin one to some cardboard).

The Eastern Swallowtails have been particularly resplendent near to me, and I've noticed that there have been a couple of Satyrs (although actually getting a shot of one has eluded me so far) around. Which was exciting, as I hadn't actually seen one myself until this year.

Sadly, this is perhaps the only thing we have any potential for agreement on.

Oh my Yes. Lately I've been collecting butterfies naitive to a little remote iland called Naath. Magnificent specimens they are, one black and white variety in particular is espectially fascinating, wings as big as my hand.
I'll send you a sample as a goodwill gesture.

Even if she survived the shot the idea that she would just go about her day and not act any different is pretty funny.

Theodore: By Gawd Eleanor, what's all the blood dripping out of you? What happened?
Eleanor: Some random old man appeared out of thin air in a flying carriage contraption and shot me but its fine.
Theodore: But there is blood everywhere, you sure you are ok?
Eleanor: Its just a flesh wound, hurts a bit alright but I'm not going to let it get me down and ruin my day so I will continue to do everything exactly as I would have as if I hadn't been shot, otherwise the commies win.

I did not postulate anything of the sort. You're attempting to construct some sort of person-shaped thing, out of flimsy material resembling hay. See my response to Extrablood. I don't think this is worth more of my time, TBH. If you want to talk about butterflies, you'll find me genuinely eager to do so. But as I've said and as you yourself made clear, your credibility with regard to scientific understanding (allowing for a potential exclusion in the case of lepidoptery which has yet to be demonstrated) is flimsier than a wet sheet of single-ply toilet paper in a butterfly-orchestrated typhoon.

That person-shaped thing was made of solid steel, the shiniest steel I could find.

I painted your position in the best possible light because as absurd as it may seem for Eleanor to just go about her day as usual despite been shot the alternative is even more absurd. The alternative is that her future actions did change yet somehow all these diverging paths somehow got back on track?

The only way of avoiding a butterfly effect is if the event can be contained before it spreads out. I'm not even convinced that is possible in real-life tbh.

Mr Blood is right about the sperm races and each conception essentially being a lottery.
You don't need to tickle Fry's scrotum as you said to change the outcome, change any inital condition leading up to it and its like resetting the lottery drum.

I know its not quite as simple as every sperm having an equal change as certain conditions such as whether the egg is in the fallopian tube will skew it in favout of a boy and vice-verse if it isn't and there are probably different levels of quality within the sperm batch but no one super sperm is going to win it everytime. There are certain sperm that probably havve a better than 250 million to one chance but their odds still would be in the millions.

I think you are getting caught up in the computer model experiment which concluded a tiny change may or may not have a butterfly effect. In real-life, shooting Eleanor is not some tiny variable in a computer model, it is definitely changing history.

[Reply #49 on:]

No, he's not right about the sperm. Yes, it's a variable that has an effect locally which could be amplified or could fade.

With regard to the conception of the PX cre members, it is unlikely to be a relevant variable.

I have  no idea where to begin dissecting your comments regarding biological mechanisms, since they're such a fascinating mixture of vaguely proper foundations and egregiously wrong conclusions.

Please read a textbook printed outside of Texas someday.

[Reply #50 on:]

Its not fading. Even if the effect was purely local which it wouldn't be since it would be global news then you would still have different people being born locally at a very minimum.

That would quickly amplify as it wouldn't just be those people and their ancestors who would be changing history but every interaction they ever had with other people which would obviously keep on rippling. Ever hear of the 6 degrees of separation? The effect would quickly reach almost everyone. Whilst no doubt there may be a certain % of people more isolated away than 6 degrees the principle is sound and applies here.

[Reply #51 on:]

News of a local assassination isn't going to change who gets conceived. The phenomenon we are talking about is ine that depends on amplification of physical effects. It's not a magical force spreading out from the epicenter of an event to mess with the formation of your sperm or change the consistency of your vaginal mucus. Nobody is canceling their Sunday Night Fumble on account of being respectful to the passing of a political figure.

As for sperm and their odds, a (relative) handful.of the most durable survive the initial race to the uterine environment, and a much smaller number survive to meet an egg.

Generally, from any set of the little swimmers, it's the most durable of the batch who gets through the outer "shell" and penetrates the egg. If you're not altering the time somebody ejaculated by more than a one-and-a-half day window, it is statistically unlikely that you're changing which sperm wins. The same batch will be shot out and fight through the same conditions, meeting the same egg.

It may grow with a placental attachment that doesn't quite form an exact match for what it would have had if fertilized a little earlier. But saying this will change who ends up being born would be a step beyond even the level of aggressive misunderstanding that you're currently occupying.

As to six degrees of separation, you once again appear to be misapplying a concept you've obviously heard of but clearly have little knowledge of the context and application of. And I'm a busy woman. I really don't have the spare time to be your remedial science teacher. For a start, it appears to be a potentially infinite curriculum.

[Reply #52 on:]

News of a local assassination isn't going to change who gets conceived. The phenomenon we are talking about is ine that depends on amplification of physical effects. It's not a magical force spreading out from the epicenter of an event to mess with the formation of your sperm or change the consistency of your vaginal mucus. Nobody is canceling their Sunday Night Fumble on account of being respectful to the passing of a political figure.

Again, you seem to be misunderstanding how the butterfly effect works. Very small changes that throws someone's schedule off by even a few seconds can quickly amplify and become significant changes.

As for sperm and their odds, a (relative) handful.of the most durable survive the initial race to the uterine environment, and a much smaller number survive to meet an egg.

Generally, from any set of the little swimmers, it's the most durable of the batch who gets through the outer "shell" and penetrates the egg. If you're not altering the time somebody ejaculated by more than a one-and-a-half day window, it is statistically unlikely that you're changing which sperm wins. The same batch will be shot out and fight through the same conditions, meeting the same egg.

Wrong, I thought you were a scientist Tnuc? Sure a small sample will surround the egg at the time of fertilization but these sperm are not the cream of the crop, but rather the survivors are a random collection of all the fit sperm which didn't get eliminated along the way due to physical abnormalities.

There is a process to eliminate defective sperm but there is still a huge amount of randomness in determining which of the millions of fit sperm makes it.

[Reply #53 on:]

News of a local assassination isn't going to change who gets conceived. The phenomenon we are talking about is ine that depends on amplification of physical effects. It's not a magical force spreading out from the epicenter of an event to mess with the formation of your sperm or change the consistency of your vaginal mucus. Nobody is canceling their Sunday Night Fumble on account of being respectful to the passing of a political figure.

Again, you seem to be misunderstanding how the butterfly effect works. Very small changes that throws someone's schedule off by even a few seconds can quickly amplify and become significant changes.

I assure you, Pete, I grasp the concept. Amplification of small changes to implement large effects in complex systems is something I've had professional experience with, and depends on interrelated mechanisms for both molecular scale and macroscopic propagation.

The butterfly effect isn't dropping your keys in the toilet making you late for work and being late for work meaning you don't get a donut in the break room and missing out making you cranky and your bad mood causing you to lose control and kill your boss. That would be a straightforward cause-and-effect chain of interactions which form a set of discrete data points for ready analysis.

The butterfly effect refers to complex, chaotic and unpredictable interactions - like the brownian motion of air molecules exiting a fast moving area of laminar flow and becoming turbulent, and the random motion of the airstream tugging at your tie. Where's your tie going to move in 3D space?

Who knows.

Speculation on causal responses to timeline alterations does not constitute application of the butterfly effect, please cease demonstrating your ignorance by applying a mathematical concept which you clearly do not have a handle on the nature or governance of.

As for sperm and their odds, a (relative) handful.of the most durable survive the initial race to the uterine environment, and a much smaller number survive to meet an egg.

Generally, from any set of the little swimmers, it's the most durable of the batch who gets through the outer "shell" and penetrates the egg. If you're not altering the time somebody ejaculated by more than a one-and-a-half day window, it is statistically unlikely that you're changing which sperm wins. The same batch will be shot out and fight through the same conditions, meeting the same egg.

Wrong, I thought you were a scientist Tnuc? Sure a small sample will surround the egg at the time of fertilization but these sperm are not the cream of the crop, but rather the survivors are a random collection of all the fit sperm which didn't get eliminated along the way due to physical abnormalities.

There are two effective factors governing the ability of sperm to reach an egg in vivo. Distance and durability.

Over short distances in vitro, sperm cells appear to move in a somewhat disordered pattern. Their durability undervsuch circumstances is not a factor in fertilization, because they are introduced to the egg relatively quickly and are all pretty fresh.

In the body though, sperm face the twin gauntlets of the vaginal canal and the uterine cavity.

Long story short, durability is tested here. It doesn't matter what other factors exist, the most durable cells of the bunch will survive to pass the cervix and enter the uterine environment. Over this long distance, most of the cells involved will exhaust the energy reserves in their tails and die. The same is true of this next leg of the journey, and by the time that the sperm reach the egg (all the way up in the fallopian tubes), there's only a few left because time and distance have taken care of all who didn't have the stamina to get this far.

Some of the stragglers will live on, even though they can't push themselves any further. They'll kick about for two to four days before dying and being expelled. These are distributed throughout the uterus and vagina, sitting in place and waiting for the egg to possibly come to them. Their motion is random and they're slowly being forced out due to gravity and the flow of lubricating fluids.

They're unlikely to fertilize an egg, even if the thing smacks into them, because they have depleted their energy reserves. And the fight to get through the outer membrane of the egg is a tough one.

It takes maybe half an hour to an hour for sperm who have a chance of fulfilling their mission to get to the egg: and if a healthy sperm cell with the right amount of energy reserve gets ejaculated into the vagina, it will get to the egg. There isn't anywhere else it's going.

The one that gets there first might not have the energy to tunnel in. But of the few that make it, the first one with enough of an energy reserve left to tunnel through will finish its job.

The survivors at each stage are not determined by anything other than motile health and energy reserves, and the ejaculated fluid contains a normal distribution of super-sperm through to the ones that eat crayons as a means to reach enlightenment.

It's the far right end of the bell curve that makes it. Average sperm do not. There's some random elements to the outcome of sexual reproduction, but we're not talking about the potential of millions of sperm, or even hundreds, to get to the egg.

Dozens, at most. And of those, it really is the "cream of the crop" as you say that had the very highest energy reserve from the time that that cell underwent meiosis in the testicular lining.

Cellular and biochemical processes are less random and more directed than you probably think. Molecular interactions are much more akin to what it seems like youre imagining.

And of course, you've probably seen little clips of gazillions of sperm in vitro doing their thing for some camera.

In vivo (within the body), there's a much different environment and set of conditional parameters. All of which are set up to ensure that in the selection of gametes for fertilization, stamina as determined by distance and exertion is the deciding factor.

Stamina wins. The sperm that endures - not necessarily the first to get to the goal, even. The one that's got enough fuel to complete the task.

So if the same batch are ejaculated, the same individual is likely to prove the most durable - the vagina isn't a crazy golf hole that eliminates balls at random, and the uterus is not some kind of dungeon crawl laden with Prince of Persia type traps and obstacles for the unwary. They're both more like really long drag strips. The thing that matters most by a couple of orders of magnitude for finishing the course is gas in the tank.

[Reply #54 on:]

This is probably my third favorite of the new batch. Some funny stuff here. My only complaints are 1) I didn't think the recurring "cookie!" joke was very funny, and 2) I didn't understand the ending explanation about how Santa was blackmailing Bender. Does it actually make sense to anyone?