Time travel and random events
Suppose we have a Branching Timeline paradigm, in which time travel into the past creates a new timeline. Is it fair to assume that any probabalistic events which might occur might be very different to what happened in the past in your original timeline?
So for example, let's say you take yesterday's lottery numbers and travel back in time to 2 days ago. You buy a ticket and fill out your numbers. You do nothing else to interfere in the world at all (and there isn't some hidden suprise where you find out later than in fact you did). Is it fair to assume that due to the complexity and near-random nature of an event like a lottery draw, the results will be different this time around not because of some cause (even a miniscule one, i.e. a butterfly effect) but simply due to the fact that a complex, near random event is happening (as opposed to "has happened" "” where the results are locked in).
Many thanks to JDÅ‚ugosz, and everyone else who commented on/edited this question in the sandbox. You helped turn what was a pretty convoluted way of asking this question (and I was aware of this - hence why I went to the sandbox to start with!) into a much more concise and useful question. The above paragraphs are a copy of the final edit, and are as readable as they are due to JDÅ‚ugosz's efforts.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/81214. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I think it is fair to assume that the more time there is before a random event, the more likely it is the random event will turn out differently.
Why? Because the world is governed by Quantum Mechanics; and we supposedly have proof (with various New Scientist articles as my source) that quantum events cannot be deterministic, and that quantum events can indeed have macroscopic effect (In the Schrodinger's Cat paradox, the setup is not in dispute: We can arrange for a cat to be killed (or a bomb to explode) if an atom emits an alpha particle; which is a random quantum event that triggers a macroscopic effect).
The Quantum events in question are a function of time, so the longer the time, the more of them occur, and the more likely it is that a chaotic system (which by definition is dependent on immeasurably tiny variations in starting conditions) will be skewed to provide a different outcome.
I would say that at the point you arrive in the past, a reset occurs: That includes re-rolling the dice on every quantum event starting at that point, which means even without any butterfly effect, the air currents blowing the lottery balls around might be slightly different and produce completely different numbers. Say some atoms decayed this time around that did not decay before, emitting energy that warmed some air molecules (or parts of the lottery machine), and vice versa; and those minute variations in heat get multiplied enough over the two days to change the outcome; one ball is deflected just a hair of a degree so its trajectory bounces off the edge of the winning ball chute; so another ball make it in there instead.
If you want to win the lottery, appear in the past about 2 minutes before the cutoff for buying a ticket; just enough time to purchase it. That makes the state of the lottery machine as close as you can get to where it was to select those particular winning numbers.
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