Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[TGLS]

A world that turned out exactly the same even though people are stupid kind of pales in comparison to a world that turned out exactly the same even though everyone is a lizard though. Infinity might just chalk it up to, "Gods with a stupid sense of humor", and leave out any philosophy.

[PTTG]

Well, in that case, let's make Rubes better. Make it so that although stupid, people in groups are still somehow quite effective. Their history is still mostly the same, it's just that somehow society works better in this world.

Now the argument is something along the lines of, "Is there something magical going on, or are these stupid humans just better at collaborating than smart ones? If they are better, is that separate from the stupidity, related to it, or intrinsic in it?"

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by TGLS

A world that turned out exactly the same even though people are stupid kind of pales in comparison to a world that turned out exactly the same even though everyone is a lizard though. Infinity might just chalk it up to, "Gods with a stupid sense of humor", and leave out any philosophy.

The more we found out out about that world the less "the same" it looked. The similarities actually seem to be "all of the national boundaries match those of our world in that year" and "the nations seems to have the same governmental types"

[TGLS]

Well, fair enough, but there still needs to be a certain amount of distance between Rube and Homeline (i.e. not constantly exact duplicates, some white noise, etc.) otherwise the timeline is totally unbelievable.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The more we found out out about that world the less "the same" it looked. The similarities actually seem to be "all of the national boundaries match those of our world in that year" and "the nations seems to have the same governmental types"

They also speak English and presumably other Earth languages.

Being logical and scientific even though Infinity knows of some gods they've invented a theoretical concept called "Temporal Inertia" to explain these sorts of inexplicable similarities. The idea probably has some validity.

[ravenfish]

The discussion of how technology could keep up in a world of subnormal intelligence brought to mind an idea for an interesting parallel. Irving-1 has something of the character of a myth parallel, rather than the "myth" being any specific story, the entire history of the advance of human knowledge seems to be based on popular understanding on Homeline.

On Irving-1, Penicillin was not discovered after years of searching for antibiotic biological agents and many further years of difficult effort to isolate the active component- it was merely a matter of Flemming happening to notice that mold in a petri dish was killing the bacteria around it. James Watt created the first steam engine ex nihilo when he saw a boiling kettle, rather than using the new understanding of physics to overcome the inherent inefficiencies of previous versions. Calculus and Gravity sprang fully formed to Newton's mind when an apple fell on his head. Scholarship completely vanished between the fall of Rome and the return of Greek Knowledge to Italy after the fall of Constantinople, and everyone knew the world was flat until Columbus sailed to America.

[PTTG]

In that timeline, Paul Bunyan still never existed, but he was a figure of legend and myth as opposed to an advertising campaign. What else... Oh, Twinkies are eternal, one must wait 24 hours to file a missing persons report, Roman archetecture included rooms specifically for vomiting in, and Napoleon was four feet tall.

Propoganda tends to make its own myths, so it might be interesting to have a few worldlines where various strains of propoganda were true. Having reality quakes shift people from one to the other has some interesting consequences.

[Flyndaran]

Mandela Banestorms where groups of people quietly jump to extremely similar worlds.

[Steve Jackson]

Sorry - I don't understand the above. Elucidate?

[Flyndaran]

The Mandela effect is a strange effect where large groups of people misremember events or details of history. It got its name from how many are certain they heard Mandela died in prison in the 80s, despite that not happening.
Many also very emphatically state that the Berenstain Bear books were once named Berenstein Bear, despite that being verifiably wrong as well.