From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Butterfly crush
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 14:15:39 

Dan'l said most of what I wanted to say except for this:

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Tony Ellis wrote:

> And that's just the Time Is A River theory. How about the Many Universes
> theory, where every quantum event since the big bang may have created
> another reality, or a potential reality? In that case, all Wolfe is doing is
> showing us one of the more interesting, lower probability worlds.

Many Universes means all possible universes exist.  I can't belive this is
a possible universe.

> I don't see how dismissing two of these theories in favour of a third, when
> in fact no one knows what happens when human history is altered

This is actually a radically sceptical view of history: you're saying that
we can never know anything about the causes of events.  Because to say
that x is the cause of an event is to say that if x were absent the event
would not have happened.  Every time we try to determine why something
happened in history we are making statements about what would have
happened if history were altered.

And, as Dan'l pointed out, there's an awful lot of history we ascribe to
causes related to fatherhood and sexuality (I'll add how different the
relationship between church/clergy and western civilization would have
been if all men were celibate up until they mated and died).

-Rostrum


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