@rbeach

Historical accidents play a surprisingly large role in shaping outcomes.Small, seemingly random events can trigger massive path-dependent consequences: Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s driver taking a wrong turn → World War I; a butterfly’s wing in chaos theory terms; penicillin’s accidental discovery by Fleming; Cortés exploiting Aztec smallpox epidemic; or how a single intercepted telegram (Zimmermann) pulled the U.S. into WWI.Counterfactual history shows many pivotal moments were razor-thin: if just one or two decisions or chance events had gone differently, entire centuries could have unfolded otherwise (no Mongol conquest? no Ming retreat from ocean? no Hitler surviving 1930s assassination attempts?).While structural forces (geography, economy, technology, culture) set the stage, contingency often decides which of several plausible futures actually occurs.In short: structure loads the dice, but accident throws them.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency_(philosophy)

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