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Everything is much more complicated than you think it is. Every action has unintended consequences far beyond your comprehension and even the littlest gesture can screw things up mightily if you play fast and loose with the past.
Butterflies are willy nilly. It's part of their charm. They careen. Whizz around in an almost random way, like children in toy stores. We are entertained by their unpredictability. Amused by the way their haphazard flight contradicts expectations. Butterflies are silly and so make us smile at the sight of their comedies.
 But this isn't whimsy. Their willy nilly isn't indifference to direction. It's a measure of their helplessness. Butterflies are breeze-buffetted by even the most imperceptible tuft of air. They are, actually, pretty remarkable in the relative success they have. Monarchs manage to migrate thousands of miles, ending up in precisely the location they intended. But the same navigators can't manage a straight line across a front lawn. Just about everything impacts a butterfly more substantially and directly than the butterfly itself. In the business of self-control, butterflies are only one small step above a dandelion seed.
The Butterfly Effect
Which is why the "butterfly effect" is important in considering reincarnation into the past. The butterfly effect explains how some very small impact (the movement of air from a butterfly's wings) can have a very large effect on some future situation (a storm). The idea is that the tiny variation in an initial condition can have a chain reaction that may compound itself, ultimately changing things in a very substantial way.
This is not hair-brained. There's some very good science going on here. All of which offers me the opportunity to drop some names and show you some really, really strange mathematical formulas. But I won't. Take my word for this. Far more important proof comes from movies and popular novels. For instance, George Bailey's view of a world where he was never born in It's a Wonderful Life is all about the butterfly effect. The sorry world that would have occurred is the whole, heart-warming point of the tale.
Gwyneth Paltrow (Sliding Doors), Ashton Kutcher (The Butterfly Effect) and Michael Fox (Back to the Future) have all made movies where changes to the past greatly alter the future. Everyone remembers the impact a little knowledge had on the evil Biff. Zounds! This is potent stuff, this past-altering.
Unintended Consequences
Unintended consequences are just what they say they are: outcomes that the actor never intended. Some people go so far as to say that any action will have some results that aren't intended. This runs somewhat parallel to Murphy's Law (if anything can go wrong, it will). But it's probably more true to say that things are a whole lot more complicated than we can imagine. And all of it is having an effect on all the rest, no matter how trivially. So, given the paltry control of the butterfly in the gnarly mess of the world, it's no wonder nothing ever turns out the way we think it will.
Time Travel
So, beware fluttering off into the past. Reincarnating yourself in some earlier time is like altering the flight of the insect: it can reverberate in unknown ways. In such cases, the entire universe is forced to bifurcate, cloning itself into 1) world as it was before the bug was reincarnated into the past and 2) the world as it turns out after the bug is sent there. For now, all I'll say is, "Yuck." More on bifurcating universes in a future blog.
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Various Speculations
Ruminations, conjecture and speculation by the All-Knowing One in his blog.
The Un-Dead Reborn - Everything you ever wanted to know about the implications of lifespan on the inanimate.
The Inevitable - How we should all think about fate.
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Ironclad & Rock Solid
We like to think of ourselves as craftsmen. Skilled workers in the field of reincarnation. Like all true-blue craftsmen, we stand behind our work.
Double! - We're so confident you'll be thrilled with your new life that we guarantee it. With a double-your-money-back offer if, following your death, you are not completely satisfied with your rebirth.
Gifts - Unfortunately, we cannot extend this offer to the loved ones you've graced with a future life. Just as you never seem to get the right thing for a birthday gift, you may mess this up, too. And, obviously, the scum you decide to doom can't legitimately complain to us, either. His grim fate is not our fault.
Double your money back guarantees operate only when someone has purchased a new life for himself.
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