{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2756",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2756,
    "subject": "Butterfly crush",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2001-08-03T08:43:51+00:00",
    "last": "2001-08-03T14:15:39+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0597@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2001-08-03T08:43:51+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Butterfly crush",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Michael Straight wrote:\nWell, if you're willing to admit it's illogical, I can't argue with you,"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Sorry, but I admitted no such thing. The 'logic' I said I wouldn't mind\ngiving a miss was very deliberately placed in inverted commas."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "but I think dismissing objections as \"just the Crushed Butterfly theory\"\nis ridiculous.  All of human history and society would be very, very, very\ndifferent if men died immediately after having intercourse."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Different, certainly. \"Very, very, very different\" is conjecture. Would the\nchanges you describe necessarily all work in the same direction, and shift\nhistory onto a completely different track, or would half of them cancel out\nthe other half, and the overall shape of history remain more or less the\nsame?\n\nAnd that's just the Time Is A River theory. How about the Many Universes\ntheory, where every quantum event since the big bang may have created\nanother reality, or a potential reality? In that case, all Wolfe is doing is\nshowing us one of the more interesting, lower probability worlds.\n\nI don't see how dismissing two of these theories in favour of a third, when\nin fact no one knows what happens when human history is altered, has\nanything to do with logic at all."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0600@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "2001-08-03T14:15:39+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Butterfly crush",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0030-0597@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Dan'l said most of what I wanted to say except for this:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Tony Ellis wrote:\nAnd that's just the Time Is A River theory. How about the Many Universes\ntheory, where every quantum event since the big bang may have created\nanother reality, or a potential reality? In that case, all Wolfe is doing is\nshowing us one of the more interesting, lower probability worlds."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Many Universes means all possible universes exist.  I can't belive this is\na possible universe."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I don't see how dismissing two of these theories in favour of a third, when\nin fact no one knows what happens when human history is altered"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This is actually a radically sceptical view of history: you're saying that\nwe can never know anything about the causes of events.  Because to say\nthat x is the cause of an event is to say that if x were absent the event\nwould not have happened.  Every time we try to determine why something\nhappened in history we are making statements about what would have\nhappened if history were altered.\n\nAnd, as Dan'l pointed out, there's an awful lot of history we ascribe to\ncauses related to fatherhood and sexuality (I'll add how different the\nrelationship between church/clergy and western civilization would have\nbeen if all men were celibate up until they mated and died).\n\n-Rostrum"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}