All of history, from chipped flint on a stick to chipped beef on toast, is the result of an impossible sequence of one in a billion causes spawning one in a billion effects. As I was leaving the house, he jumped up on the counter and mewed pathetically, so I took three seconds to pet him before I left. Three seconds earlier, and I would have been in the center of that intersection and been killed. Perhaps you will miss an article in the New York Times online because you only have so much time for cruising the net, and this essay consumed just enough of it that you cut your reading short. Of such is reality made.
Reality is a three-dimensional pachinko game played in randomly varying gravity.
We are all makers and destroyers of worlds. And with that, I'm going to go grab some lunch. A trivial decision.