Thus, running historical counter-factuals is an easy way to accidentally mislead yourself. We simply don’t know what else would have occurred had Cleopatra not met Caesar or had you not been stuck at that airport. The potential outcomes are too chaotic. But we can use thought experiments to explore unrealized outcomes—to re-run a process as many ti

The key point is this: even if you’re not convinced that Napoleon really mattered, you don’t and indeed can’t really know this. There is a real chance that Napoleon being born, rather than a different child from a different act of conception, fundamentally changed world history. So in terms of expected value, it remains the case that small acts can

You take it for granted that present action can change the future, but present actions can also change the past.

The future is whatever time feels far enough away for things to really change. It is a completely subjective truth. The future starts whenever you feel ready for dramatic change: big change, scary change, prayed-for change, crazy change.