Very often, alternate history questions have no answer, because so many things could happen. Example: “If Julius Caesar dies as a child, who controls Italy in 2000 AD?” Even an easier question like “does the Roman Empire still exist in 500 AD” is going to be a matter of probability. One problem is that all people born after the point of divergence are going to have different genes.
I’m also intimidated by how much more reality knows about history than I do.
I don’t really understand why “it provides a good training ground for futurist who don’t want to wait 20 or 30 years to get feedback on their thinking”—in alternate history, there’s no feedback at all. Is it just a matter of having more unanswered questions to think about? We might consider trying to predict “alternate futures” in that case. Obscure real history avoids this problem, but we should watch out for biases in selecting questions and relevant information.
Some worries:
Very often, alternate history questions have no answer, because so many things could happen. Example: “If Julius Caesar dies as a child, who controls Italy in 2000 AD?” Even an easier question like “does the Roman Empire still exist in 500 AD” is going to be a matter of probability. One problem is that all people born after the point of divergence are going to have different genes.
I’m also intimidated by how much more reality knows about history than I do.
I don’t really understand why “it provides a good training ground for futurist who don’t want to wait 20 or 30 years to get feedback on their thinking”—in alternate history, there’s no feedback at all. Is it just a matter of having more unanswered questions to think about? We might consider trying to predict “alternate futures” in that case. Obscure real history avoids this problem, but we should watch out for biases in selecting questions and relevant information.