I was watching a teevee show this morning where they mentioned the “Butterfly Effect.” This is a part of chaos theory which postulates that a very small change in a system can result in a large difference in the eventual outcome. You may remember this from “Jurassic Park,” where, IIRC, Jeff Goldblum explains that a butterfly flaps its wings which kicks up a particle of dust which makes a wildebeest or something snort which spooks the herd which for some reason or other results in a hurricane or something. There are even mathematical equations and shit that explain it. Whatever. While fully acknowledging that I’m not a scientist (and didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night), I have to say that I think it’s a load of crap – the kind of oversimplified “sciencey” sounding pabulum that sounds good and appeals to the general movie-going population. At least in the way it’s presented in movies and popular culture. You see a variation of this in a lot of “time travel” type movies. You know, where the guy travels back to prehistoric times and steps on a flower, then returns the present and finds out the Nazis got “the bomb” first and won WWII.

I’m not saying that relatively small changes can have dramatic effects. Just that those changes need to rise above a certain level to overcome the “noise.” So the tiny breeze generated by our friend the butterfly flapping its wings is cancelled out by any number of other factors (other flapping insects, birds, whatever). Go slap that wildebeest on the ass, and maybe you’ve got something.

I believe Isaac Asimov addressed this in his 1958 short story “Lastborn” (later re-published as “The Ugly Little Boy”). And I’ll believe Asimov over Michael Crichton any day of the week.

But, anyway, what interests me more is that age-old time travel conundrum about going back in time and killing your grandfather (presumably by accident, as it would be a rather stupid thing to do on purpose). You know, it’s a paradox because if you did that they you wouldn’t exist, but then if you didn’t exist, you couldn’t go back to do that, so….

Not much of a paradox, IMHO, because, since you apparently do exist, clearly you never went back in time and killed your grandfather. I mean, duh. It’s right up there with saying there’s just got to be a God-type creator, ‘cuz everything on this planet evolved in precisely the right way to bring us where we are today (which is just confusing cause and effect – though if it makes people feel better, good for them).

Anyhow, what interests me is how far you’d have to go back to prevent you from existing (let’s leave existential and soul-type shit out of it, for the moment).

Rather than committing patricide, how about we just prevent our parents from meeting in the first place. Clearly, you wouldn’t be here. And if one set of your maternal grandparents never met, then your mother wouldn’t have been around to meet your father.

But what if, say, your g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandmother hadn’t hooked up with your g8-grandfather, what would you be? I mean (all else being equal), there’d only be a tiny fraction of different inherited DNA in there.

Would there be any noticeable difference? Eye color? Affinity (or lack thereof) for seafood? Some recombination of recessive genes giving you cancer (or keeping you from getting it)? Would your thoughts be different? My guess is that a change that far back would fail to rise above the “noise” and you’d pretty much still be you.

Not that there’d be any way to tell.

Back in my family history, when my mother’s father’s mother’s mother (or something) came to Canada from Ireland with her fiancé, the little boat that brought the passengers to shore from the big boat (pardon my lack of nautical knowledge) overturned in rough seas. My would-be great-great-grandfather jumped in to save his future wife from drowning. She was saved. Him? Not so much.

Must have been tragic to witness your fianc̩ drown Рonly to abandon you, alone, in a strange country.

And out of that tragedy, I was spawned. Eventually. Had it gone down in any other way, I wouldn’t be here. Not as I am now, anyway (I am clearly lacking the “hero” gene, for one thing – and I bet I’d have a better back).

Speaking of my poor old back, time to go aggravate it trying to fix my tractor.