8 ms·

Pop culture loves the 'butterfly effect' and gets it wrong

72 points by smacktoward 7y ago

golemiprague 7y ago
Interesting that it came from a climate scientist, unlike the ones today who seems to know exactly what is going to happen in the future.
melling 7y ago
“They expose the growing chasm between what the public expects from scientific research - that is, a series of ever more precise answers about the world we live in - and the realms of uncertainty into which modern science is taking us.” Perhaps it’s not a butterfly effect, but I like to think of the “butterfly effect” of extra money invested in research, for example, paying off in large future dividends. For instance, if the transistor had been discovered 10 years earlier, would the world be significantly different today? Imagine hundreds of other smaller discoveries had happened sooner...
- anyfoo 7y ago
  Of course the world would be entirely different today, but whether that results in "large future dividends" is entirely unpredictable, and the whole point of the butterfly effect. Maybe some very talented people would have picked up a career based on transistors before they were locked into something else and humanity would have harnessed fusion power by now. Maybe some aggressive people would have harnessed transistors for weapons earlier and humanity would be eradicated by now. Maybe due to a strange coincidence involving a transistor salesman on a trip to Brazil and some records on his way back, we'd all be dancing Bossa Nova at New Year's Eve, in honor of a decades old tradition. "What if", is, in reality, pointless, as everything depends on everything (at least within our Light Cone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone )
  - melling 7y ago
    i never said it would be predictable. Also, I’m not trying to play what-if with the past, I’m trying to get you to think about a different future where we make an additional investmen/effort to learn more sooner.
    - anyfoo 7y ago
      That's noble, but a bit far away from the article, so I did not realize what you meant. (Plus, I'd consider it likely that most people spending any time on such rather academic concepts as the Butterfly Effect are well aware of the payoff that science and education can bring, directly or indirectly.)
      - melling 7y ago
        “the concept that small events can have large, widespread consequences” If the US spent 1% more on research every year, that would have a large widespread consequence. If the top 10 ten countries did... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_researc...
- beautifulfreak 7y ago
  Bell Labs, where the transistor was discovered, did exactly what you suggest, so maybe the transistor did actually appear 10 years early. It's famous for letting its scientists concentrate on research without concern for commercial uses.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dcanelhas 7y ago
The butterfly effect movie doesn't get this concept wrong IMO, since it's all about the unpredictable results of past actions. It does however have some logical plot holes large enough to fit a tornado through.
- klez 7y ago
  Yep, the point is exactly that no matter how Ivan tried to change things for the better, unforeseen consequences would still arise, like his friend being interned or he losing his arms or the other guy becoming a boy scout instead of a psychopath.
  - zokier 7y ago
    I think the point the article is trying to make is that butterfly effect does not refer to unpredictability of future, as much as how difficult it is to trace back how we got to this point. While they are two sides of the same chaos coin, it is different perspective to look backwards and understand that it is not clear which event was decisive (if any) to reach current state vs trying to predict future. Especially as we humans are prone to creating easy narratives of past, but more easily accept the futility of predicting future.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Yeah, I feel like pop culture in general gets that idea right (that a small change can have a large effect, and it is unpredictable). Jurassic Park also has gets that concept correct. I feel like pop culture uses the butterfly effect as shorthand for "don't change anything in the past because you have no idea how big a change it would cause in seemingly unrelated things"
  - thwarted 7y ago
    I feel like pop culture uses the butterfly effect as shorthand for "don't change anything in the past because you have no idea how big a change it would cause in seemingly unrelated things" This is the plot of Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder".
anyfoo 7y ago
The actual Butterfly Effect sometimes gets me thinking. Unlike what's popular in time travel fiction, it seems to me that even the tiniest change would cause a completely different world, with completely different people inhabiting it, about a generation or so deeper. As a stupid example, consider the change being a tree branch falling in the Serengeti. A small animal, which would otherwise have just continued eating, scuttles away. It crosses a nearby road, causing a nearly imperceptible slowdown for a woman on here way to the airport. She arrives just a few seconds later, but it's enough for the pattern of people in the hall to change and her to not see a sandwich shop she would have seen at a glance. She arrives meeting her husband, sleeps with him just like in the original timeline--but because she's slightly more hungry, did slightly different things on the plane, and so has slightly different discussions, they sleep with each other a tiny bit earlier or later, in an ever so slightly different position, but completely enough to either not cause conception of the child they would have conceived originally, or the conception of a different child (different sperm, different combination of genetic material, and so on). And now it's obvious. The child is essentially a completely different person, with completely different thoughts, actions, being not exactly where the original child would habe been throughout its life at practically all moments (even if they go to the same school, they're unlikely to stand in the same spot in the hallway at all times). Blocking other people's view, or slowing them down, or causing them to go somewhere else. Causing many many "tree branches" of its own, many of which result in people meeting or not meeting other people, or having different offspring regardless, and so on. Now, consider that this was just looking at one consequence of the falling tree branch. There are many more. The point is, it can be the tiniest things that ripple through time to entirely change who is populating earth a few decades later. In media, even when the change is "prevent World War II", today's world almost always gets portrayed with the same characters and same personalities, that somehow still all met. I don't blame the writers, though, it certainly makes for a more entertaining story.
- hanoz 7y ago
  Absolutely, the butterfly effect renders all back in time plots fatally flawed. Never mind killing Hitler's grandfather or making sure your parents still meet, your very appearance in an earlier world, even for an instant, would guarantee that before long you and everyone else who would otherwise have been born afterwards would certainly never exist.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DoreenMichele 7y ago
I generally think of time travel fiction as a means to explore and develop "what if" type thinking for purposes of enhanced decision making. So I tend to cut them some slack for their myriad shortcomings. I find them useful for developing pragmatic mental models. I liked The Butterfly Effect. I also like A sound of thunder wherein the death of a moth alters the future.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
I don't understand this article at all. >A SmartMoney.com market analysis from 2007 cites Lorenz, then suggests that hypothetical problems at Sony could affect a string of shippers, retailers, and investors: "One butterfly, in this case a Japanese butterfly, sets off the entire chain." Even applied to society, rather than nature, such claims merit skepticism. What's wrong with that? Is he blissfully unaware of, for example, the Maersk hack and how it "butterfly effected" the entire chain?
- quelltext 7y ago
  The author's point is that anytime the butterfly effect is used in this way (identifying the singular cause of a chain) it insinuates that we can always pinpoint such a butterfly if we look very hard or that there is one single such butterfly causing the chain of effect in the first place. However Lorenz (at least per the author) tried to make the exact opposite point. Among many many variables if one slightly changes (e.g. flap or no flap of a butterfly's wings somewhere) it can affect a lot, but we don't know which one. I don't know it's wrong per say to use it as most people do but I see the author'a point. It's often (falsely) used when there is a chain of ovents and we know which thing caused that chain.
- danielparks 7y ago
  This issue is that we can draw a causal line back to a single event, e.g. the hack. Their definition (presumably the original definition) of the butterfly effect requires that it be untraceable. If you make a tiny change to initial conditions, you can’t accurately predict the outcome without a complete model.
PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
It also loves the "carrot and stick" analogy, and gets that wrong too.
cairo_x 7y ago
Billions of events happen regardless of billions and billions of previous events having happened.
roel_v 7y ago
What caught my eye in this article was this sentence: "This is a founding idea of chaos theory, whose advocates sometimes say Lorenz helped dispel the Newtonian idea of a wholly predictable universe." Maybe someone more well-versed in physics than myself can comment: is it really so that 'metaphysical determinism' (so to say) is specific to Newtonian physics, and so, that it's no longer the state of the art in our understanding of nature? In other words, is there no room for Laplace's demon beyond classical mechanics? That would take the concept of the nature of 'randomness' beyond what I so far understood it to be.
- rwallace 7y ago
  Metaphysical determinism still works in relativity. It also still works in quantum mechanics if you accept the many-worlds interpretation. That's quite orthogonal to the question of practical predictability. What chaos theory shows is that, regardless of which model of microscopic physics we are talking about, there are important aspects of the future that cannot be predicted to high precision from within the universe.
  - jhrmnn 7y ago
    No, it doesn't work in quantum mechanics. Even under many-worlds, the result of a measurement is fundamentally indeterminable until it is realized. In many-worlds parlance—which "world" you end up in is indeterminable.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      You end up in all the worlds.
- jmaa 7y ago
  The word "predictable" implies "deterministic", but they are not identical. The universe can be governed by strong deterministic laws, while being too complex to simulate and thus predict. This poses some difficult questions for science, given that most science up to now has been about predicting something, trying it and checking whether theory and practice matches.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
Good news for the butterfly: Nobody affected by the storm will know WHICH butterfly caused it. Also there is a detail I don't understand: Lorenz talked about the pressure differential underneath a butterfly's wing, being used in a large-scale weather simulation. But given the computing resources and thus the limited resolution of such simulations at the time, I wonder how big that butterfly must have been.
rimliu 7y ago
My favorite time-travel version is still The Technicolor Time Machine by Harry Harrison. It does away with this by having a single timeline. And if you go to the past, it means you were already there "originally". Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_princ...

72 points by smacktoward 7y ago

Interesting that it came from a climate scientist, unlike the ones today who seems to know exactly what is going to happen in the future.

melling 7y ago

“They expose the growing chasm between what the public expects from scientific research - that is, a series of ever more precise answers about the world we live in - and the realms of uncertainty into which modern science is taking us.” Perhaps it’s not a butterfly effect, but I like to think of the “butterfly effect” of extra money invested in research, for example, paying off in large future dividends. For instance, if the transistor had been discovered 10 years earlier, would the world be significantly different today? Imagine hundreds of other smaller discoveries had happened sooner...

anyfoo 7y ago
Of course the world would be entirely different today, but whether that results in "large future dividends" is entirely unpredictable, and the whole point of the butterfly effect. Maybe some very talented people would have picked up a career based on transistors before they were locked into something else and humanity would have harnessed fusion power by now. Maybe some aggressive people would have harnessed transistors for weapons earlier and humanity would be eradicated by now. Maybe due to a strange coincidence involving a transistor salesman on a trip to Brazil and some records on his way back, we'd all be dancing Bossa Nova at New Year's Eve, in honor of a decades old tradition. "What if", is, in reality, pointless, as everything depends on everything (at least within our Light Cone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone )
- melling 7y ago
  i never said it would be predictable. Also, I’m not trying to play what-if with the past, I’m trying to get you to think about a different future where we make an additional investmen/effort to learn more sooner.
  - anyfoo 7y ago
    That's noble, but a bit far away from the article, so I did not realize what you meant. (Plus, I'd consider it likely that most people spending any time on such rather academic concepts as the Butterfly Effect are well aware of the payoff that science and education can bring, directly or indirectly.)
    - melling 7y ago
      “the concept that small events can have large, widespread consequences” If the US spent 1% more on research every year, that would have a large widespread consequence. If the top 10 ten countries did... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_researc...
beautifulfreak 7y ago
Bell Labs, where the transistor was discovered, did exactly what you suggest, so maybe the transistor did actually appear 10 years early. It's famous for letting its scientists concentrate on research without concern for commercial uses.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dcanelhas 7y ago

The butterfly effect movie doesn't get this concept wrong IMO, since it's all about the unpredictable results of past actions. It does however have some logical plot holes large enough to fit a tornado through.

klez 7y ago
Yep, the point is exactly that no matter how Ivan tried to change things for the better, unforeseen consequences would still arise, like his friend being interned or he losing his arms or the other guy becoming a boy scout instead of a psychopath.
- zokier 7y ago
  I think the point the article is trying to make is that butterfly effect does not refer to unpredictability of future, as much as how difficult it is to trace back how we got to this point. While they are two sides of the same chaos coin, it is different perspective to look backwards and understand that it is not clear which event was decisive (if any) to reach current state vs trying to predict future. Especially as we humans are prone to creating easy narratives of past, but more easily accept the futility of predicting future.
cortesoft 7y ago
Yeah, I feel like pop culture in general gets that idea right (that a small change can have a large effect, and it is unpredictable). Jurassic Park also has gets that concept correct. I feel like pop culture uses the butterfly effect as shorthand for "don't change anything in the past because you have no idea how big a change it would cause in seemingly unrelated things"
- thwarted 7y ago
  I feel like pop culture uses the butterfly effect as shorthand for "don't change anything in the past because you have no idea how big a change it would cause in seemingly unrelated things" This is the plot of Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder".

anyfoo 7y ago

The actual Butterfly Effect sometimes gets me thinking. Unlike what's popular in time travel fiction, it seems to me that even the tiniest change would cause a completely different world, with completely different people inhabiting it, about a generation or so deeper. As a stupid example, consider the change being a tree branch falling in the Serengeti. A small animal, which would otherwise have just continued eating, scuttles away. It crosses a nearby road, causing a nearly imperceptible slowdown for a woman on here way to the airport. She arrives just a few seconds later, but it's enough for the pattern of people in the hall to change and her to not see a sandwich shop she would have seen at a glance. She arrives meeting her husband, sleeps with him just like in the original timeline--but because she's slightly more hungry, did slightly different things on the plane, and so has slightly different discussions, they sleep with each other a tiny bit earlier or later, in an ever so slightly different position, but completely enough to either not cause conception of the child they would have conceived originally, or the conception of a different child (different sperm, different combination of genetic material, and so on). And now it's obvious. The child is essentially a completely different person, with completely different thoughts, actions, being not exactly where the original child would habe been throughout its life at practically all moments (even if they go to the same school, they're unlikely to stand in the same spot in the hallway at all times). Blocking other people's view, or slowing them down, or causing them to go somewhere else. Causing many many "tree branches" of its own, many of which result in people meeting or not meeting other people, or having different offspring regardless, and so on. Now, consider that this was just looking at one consequence of the falling tree branch. There are many more. The point is, it can be the tiniest things that ripple through time to entirely change who is populating earth a few decades later. In media, even when the change is "prevent World War II", today's world almost always gets portrayed with the same characters and same personalities, that somehow still all met. I don't blame the writers, though, it certainly makes for a more entertaining story.

hanoz 7y ago
Absolutely, the butterfly effect renders all back in time plots fatally flawed. Never mind killing Hitler's grandfather or making sure your parents still meet, your very appearance in an earlier world, even for an instant, would guarantee that before long you and everyone else who would otherwise have been born afterwards would certainly never exist.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I generally think of time travel fiction as a means to explore and develop "what if" type thinking for purposes of enhanced decision making. So I tend to cut them some slack for their myriad shortcomings. I find them useful for developing pragmatic mental models. I liked The Butterfly Effect. I also like A sound of thunder wherein the death of a moth alters the future.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

I don't understand this article at all. >A SmartMoney.com market analysis from 2007 cites Lorenz, then suggests that hypothetical problems at Sony could affect a string of shippers, retailers, and investors: "One butterfly, in this case a Japanese butterfly, sets off the entire chain." Even applied to society, rather than nature, such claims merit skepticism. What's wrong with that? Is he blissfully unaware of, for example, the Maersk hack and how it "butterfly effected" the entire chain?

quelltext 7y ago
The author's point is that anytime the butterfly effect is used in this way (identifying the singular cause of a chain) it insinuates that we can always pinpoint such a butterfly if we look very hard or that there is one single such butterfly causing the chain of effect in the first place. However Lorenz (at least per the author) tried to make the exact opposite point. Among many many variables if one slightly changes (e.g. flap or no flap of a butterfly's wings somewhere) it can affect a lot, but we don't know which one. I don't know it's wrong per say to use it as most people do but I see the author'a point. It's often (falsely) used when there is a chain of ovents and we know which thing caused that chain.
danielparks 7y ago
This issue is that we can draw a causal line back to a single event, e.g. the hack. Their definition (presumably the original definition) of the butterfly effect requires that it be untraceable. If you make a tiny change to initial conditions, you can’t accurately predict the outcome without a complete model.

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago

It also loves the "carrot and stick" analogy, and gets that wrong too.

cairo_x 7y ago

Billions of events happen regardless of billions and billions of previous events having happened.

roel_v 7y ago

What caught my eye in this article was this sentence: "This is a founding idea of chaos theory, whose advocates sometimes say Lorenz helped dispel the Newtonian idea of a wholly predictable universe." Maybe someone more well-versed in physics than myself can comment: is it really so that 'metaphysical determinism' (so to say) is specific to Newtonian physics, and so, that it's no longer the state of the art in our understanding of nature? In other words, is there no room for Laplace's demon beyond classical mechanics? That would take the concept of the nature of 'randomness' beyond what I so far understood it to be.

rwallace 7y ago
Metaphysical determinism still works in relativity. It also still works in quantum mechanics if you accept the many-worlds interpretation. That's quite orthogonal to the question of practical predictability. What chaos theory shows is that, regardless of which model of microscopic physics we are talking about, there are important aspects of the future that cannot be predicted to high precision from within the universe.
- jhrmnn 7y ago
  No, it doesn't work in quantum mechanics. Even under many-worlds, the result of a measurement is fundamentally indeterminable until it is realized. In many-worlds parlance—which "world" you end up in is indeterminable.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    You end up in all the worlds.
jmaa 7y ago
The word "predictable" implies "deterministic", but they are not identical. The universe can be governed by strong deterministic laws, while being too complex to simulate and thus predict. This poses some difficult questions for science, given that most science up to now has been about predicting something, trying it and checking whether theory and practice matches.

bayesian_horse 7y ago

Good news for the butterfly: Nobody affected by the storm will know WHICH butterfly caused it. Also there is a detail I don't understand: Lorenz talked about the pressure differential underneath a butterfly's wing, being used in a large-scale weather simulation. But given the computing resources and thus the limited resolution of such simulations at the time, I wonder how big that butterfly must have been.

rimliu 7y ago

My favorite time-travel version is still The Technicolor Time Machine by Harry Harrison. It does away with this by having a single timeline. And if you go to the past, it means you were already there "originally". Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_princ...