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> The lack of oats to feed horses may have inspired the German inventor Karl Drais to research new ways of horseless transportation, which led to the invention

> The lack of oats to feed horses may have inspired the German inventor Karl Drais to research new ways of horseless transportation, which led to the invention of the draisine or velocipede. This was the ancestor of the modern bicycle and a step toward mechanized personal transport. This truly captures the "butterfly effect" which I continually marvel at. How much of what has happened in human history has been because of a seemingly entirely unrelated series of events? Probably quite a lot.

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justin66 7y ago
Animals going hungry because of a global famine caused by a massive volcanic eruption, and the concomitant technological developments to replace those animals, are as far from being examples of the butterfly effect as anything could possibly be. (sorry to be that guy, but...)
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  The butterfly effect in this case is that a small change (volcano not erupting) would cause a huge change in the future (no mass mechanized personal transport). Whether the insight is true is debatable, but it definitely is a butterfly effect compared to the standard popular view that technological development is somehow this inevitable thing.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - Retric 7y ago
    Butterfly effect refers to a drastically smaller change than a massive volcanic eruption significantly impacting global weather. The point is differences that are hard to notice making a difference. Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.[2] Wind speed of 2.56789281 MPH vs 2.567892811 MPH is hard to accurately detect, but it’s important. That’s the butterfly effect.
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    I think the point here is that a volcano erupting (according to the wiki the most powerful eruption in recorded human history) triggering a global climate catastrophe is not a "small" change.
    - justin66 7y ago
      Yes, and equally to the point, its consequences were in retrospect big and rather predictable. The butterfly effect refers (colloquially) to seemingly small causes (butterfly wings fluttering) leading to big and completely unpredictable effects. Nothing involved with what we're talking about is similar to the butterfly effect... except in that there was a cause and an effect. I realize this is all a bit silly to go on about and there's no conceivable future where the OP sees the egregious error of his ways and ritually disembowels himself, or even, you know, starts using the term properly.
      - bonoboTP 7y ago
        Long chain of causation from A to Z, where A and Z are not intuitively connected. Also, volcanos are pretty chaotic themselves. Non-butterfly would be: due to increasing population size and a growth of cities and long distance commerce, people invented cars. A very stable reason, not reliant on something fragile. Butterfly: the balance of magma happened to be in a certain particular configuration, which ultimately lead to a revolution in our lifestyle. Had the magma been slightly different, we'd be on horseback. Again, maybe the story above does not add up, but if it does, it deserves to be called butterfly.
- Thorentis 7y ago
  I suppose the "butterfly effect" is often used synonymously with "domino effect", but has extra connotations of the outcome being particularly profound, and the initial event/change being rather unrelated. While perhaps not a textbook example of the butterfly effect, it certainly made me ponder the chain of events that leads to technological advancement.
xixixao 7y ago
I also noticed this, and followed onto his page to find this fun! fact: > However, after marketing the velocipede, it became apparent that roads were so rutted by carriages that it was hard to balance on the machine for long, so velocipede riders took to the pavements and moved far too quickly, endangering pedestrians. Consequently, authorities in Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and even Calcutta banned its use, which ended its vogue for decades.
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zwegner 7y ago
I'd highly recommend the TV series Connections[0], which explores the history of science and technology through the lens of this sort of butterfly effect. There were a couple later reboots of the series that are not as good IMO, but still worth a watch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)
- the6threplicant 7y ago
  Pretty much anything by James Burke, either video or print.
- simonh 7y ago
  Connections is a fantastic series, it's a lot of fun and I loved it as a child. My concerns about it is that too many people seem to imagine that because historically an outcome had a cause, that therefore that cause must have been necessary, and that therefore the outcome could never have happened without that specific cause. If they Fluyt, a type of Dutch cargo ship had not been invented, would we really have never developed plastics? So the series provides a very valuable insight into historical processes, but some people seem to take that to implausible extremes. A case in point is the many examples of technologies being independently developed by different people under very different circumstances.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    Not so much necessary as it was a driving force. A bit like evolution, whatever caused our ancestors to develop eyes wasn't s necessary precursor,it was just something that was reacted too. There resulting solution being good enough to survive. There were many implementations of bicycles that never made it, those branches of development died off. However unlike evolution we can pick those up again and improve on them if we thought we could produce a better bicycle
- robohoe 7y ago
  Richard Hammond's (from Top Gear fame) Engineering Connection is a continuation of the original Connections. We found ourselves watching it on the weekends during breakfast as a gentle jumpstart to daily thinking. It's fantastic and highly recommended.
Drakar1903 7y ago
I like to share this example when asked about butterfly effects: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/c39y75/what_are_the_most_interesting_domino_effects_in/erpo368/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/c39y75/what_are_...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

justin66 7y ago

Animals going hungry because of a global famine caused by a massive volcanic eruption, and the concomitant technological developments to replace those animals, are as far from being examples of the butterfly effect as anything could possibly be. (sorry to be that guy, but...)

bonoboTP 7y ago
The butterfly effect in this case is that a small change (volcano not erupting) would cause a huge change in the future (no mass mechanized personal transport). Whether the insight is true is debatable, but it definitely is a butterfly effect compared to the standard popular view that technological development is somehow this inevitable thing.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 7y ago
  Butterfly effect refers to a drastically smaller change than a massive volcanic eruption significantly impacting global weather. The point is differences that are hard to notice making a difference. Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.[2] Wind speed of 2.56789281 MPH vs 2.567892811 MPH is hard to accurately detect, but it’s important. That’s the butterfly effect.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  I think the point here is that a volcano erupting (according to the wiki the most powerful eruption in recorded human history) triggering a global climate catastrophe is not a "small" change.
  - justin66 7y ago
    Yes, and equally to the point, its consequences were in retrospect big and rather predictable. The butterfly effect refers (colloquially) to seemingly small causes (butterfly wings fluttering) leading to big and completely unpredictable effects. Nothing involved with what we're talking about is similar to the butterfly effect... except in that there was a cause and an effect. I realize this is all a bit silly to go on about and there's no conceivable future where the OP sees the egregious error of his ways and ritually disembowels himself, or even, you know, starts using the term properly.
    - bonoboTP 7y ago
      Long chain of causation from A to Z, where A and Z are not intuitively connected. Also, volcanos are pretty chaotic themselves. Non-butterfly would be: due to increasing population size and a growth of cities and long distance commerce, people invented cars. A very stable reason, not reliant on something fragile. Butterfly: the balance of magma happened to be in a certain particular configuration, which ultimately lead to a revolution in our lifestyle. Had the magma been slightly different, we'd be on horseback. Again, maybe the story above does not add up, but if it does, it deserves to be called butterfly.
Thorentis 7y ago
I suppose the "butterfly effect" is often used synonymously with "domino effect", but has extra connotations of the outcome being particularly profound, and the initial event/change being rather unrelated. While perhaps not a textbook example of the butterfly effect, it certainly made me ponder the chain of events that leads to technological advancement.

xixixao 7y ago

I also noticed this, and followed onto his page to find this fun! fact: > However, after marketing the velocipede, it became apparent that roads were so rutted by carriages that it was hard to balance on the machine for long, so velocipede riders took to the pavements and moved far too quickly, endangering pedestrians. Consequently, authorities in Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and even Calcutta banned its use, which ended its vogue for decades.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

zwegner 7y ago

I'd highly recommend the TV series Connections[0], which explores the history of science and technology through the lens of this sort of butterfly effect. There were a couple later reboots of the series that are not as good IMO, but still worth a watch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)

the6threplicant 7y ago
Pretty much anything by James Burke, either video or print.
simonh 7y ago
Connections is a fantastic series, it's a lot of fun and I loved it as a child. My concerns about it is that too many people seem to imagine that because historically an outcome had a cause, that therefore that cause must have been necessary, and that therefore the outcome could never have happened without that specific cause. If they Fluyt, a type of Dutch cargo ship had not been invented, would we really have never developed plastics? So the series provides a very valuable insight into historical processes, but some people seem to take that to implausible extremes. A case in point is the many examples of technologies being independently developed by different people under very different circumstances.
- celticninja 7y ago
  Not so much necessary as it was a driving force. A bit like evolution, whatever caused our ancestors to develop eyes wasn't s necessary precursor,it was just something that was reacted too. There resulting solution being good enough to survive. There were many implementations of bicycles that never made it, those branches of development died off. However unlike evolution we can pick those up again and improve on them if we thought we could produce a better bicycle
robohoe 7y ago
Richard Hammond's (from Top Gear fame) Engineering Connection is a continuation of the original Connections. We found ourselves watching it on the weekends during breakfast as a gentle jumpstart to daily thinking. It's fantastic and highly recommended.

Drakar1903 7y ago

I like to share this example when asked about butterfly effects: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/c39y75/what_are_the_most_interesting_domino_effects_in/erpo368/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/c39y75/what_are_...