Temporal Mechanics: The Butterfly Effect

Probably the most confusing bit about time travel are all the paradoxes. One such is the Butterfly Effect.

Apparently, the belief is that if you go back in time and step on a butterfly, you could change the course of human events. Let's examine that, shall we?

Forget that time travel is impossible with our current technology. Let's say that you go back in time to 1855 and you step on a butterfly. Oh, my, what's going to happen now?

Logic says, absolutely nothing. How could stepping on a butterfly change the course of human events? It's a butterfly! One, they're flying insects. They're extremely difficult to squish. The only possible way you'd be able to squish one is if your time machine and said butterfly happen to come into the same space at the same point in time. Okay, I can believe that. At best, the only thing you know before you land is that you're not landing on anything very big, such as a person or a cat. A butterfly? Only the most advanced sensors could pick that up. So let's go with that for the time being.

You squished a butterfly with your time machine. How can butterflies possibly change the course of human history? If you don't believe in evolution, then maybe you could say that God (big "G", little "g", whatever you believe) chose that butterfly to do something great. I mean, if He does it with humans, why shouldn't he do it with the other animals He created? Well, if He needs that butterfly for something, why didn't He save it? Well, maybe that butterfly was chosen to be the catalyst for the beginning of a butterfly takeover (that opens up so much for humor, but I'm going to try to stay on topic, letting dozens of jokes blow in the wind), thus all is right with the world: That butterfly was going to be stepped on anyway, it just happened sooner than intended.

Come on, a butterfly takeover? Look at a butterfly's brain: If it was advanced enough to take over, there'd already be a city somewhere with a government arranged by butterflies. Get. Real.

So, what about evolution? Well, it's safe to assume that if butterflies could change the course of human history, a number of genetic mutations would have to occur before that time, and over several centuries. Well, if those genetic mutations were supposed to happen anyway, the space-time continuum will adapt around it. There are thousands upon thousands of butterflies, at the very least. All you'll have done was create an alternate universe that likely looks a lot like yours until some point far in the future, where it will still look a lot like yours except the butterflies will have different genetic code in that universe than in the other.

If you travel into the future and step on a butterfly, same thing: You won't change the past, just the future, and if the butterflies haven't conquered the universe by then, sorry, Mr. Monarch-Butterfly, it's going to be a while before that happens. But hang in there, I'm sure you'll get lucky one of these days.

So you might as well get rid of the Butterfly Effect altogether, because unless I missed something, it really doesn't make any sense.