Night of the Guillotine: The Fall of Robespierre

Re:Night of the Guillotine: The Fall of Robespierre by mongol on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @05:24PM (#27826502)

I think differently. For example, if Newton would have perished as a child due to an unfortunate accident, the physics he discovered would have been discovered by someone else. It was just a matter of time. But geopolitical events can turn out very differently due to random flukes, such as the outcome of a battle.

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Re:Night of the Guillotine: The Fall of Robespierre by chasil on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @05:49PM (#27826712)

Perhaps you mean Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz?

We have to admit that the dy/dx notation has proven more useful than f'(x), as we all saw in our first semester of calculus.

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Re:Night of the Guillotine: The Fall of Robespierre by mongol on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @05:52PM (#27826727)

Yes, for example.

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Re:Night of the Guillotine: The Fall of Robespierre by TrevorJ on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @06:09PM (#27826896)

I would say that individual 'inflection points' might be incredibly rare. IE: maybe only 1 notable event out of 10,000 is like this. But something like this would only have to play out once or twice far back in history before the world we see today would be very different.

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Re:Night of the Guillotine: The Fall of Robespierre by maverick-iceman on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @07:47PM (#27827611)

Humans were down to 10,000 units at some time.

Maybe some leader consolidated power and convinced the tribe to embark in a journey to move somewhere else where water was more plentiful and food too, we can only imagine that ...had his attempt at convincing the tribe been unsuccesful we would not be here today!

Or maybe the opposite, which is also true...somebody level headed convinced the tribe not to embark in such a journey...to stay, because with so few units it was not the time to make experiments or gambles

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