> It was causing me some stress and depression because when you start doing analysis many level deep the only conclusion is any small variance will simply cause

> It was causing me some stress and depression because when you start doing analysis many level deep the only conclusion is any small variance will simply cause Chaos. With n-body simulation problems, we don’t actually observe immediate chaotic behavior following small perturbations. In fact, we can readily simulate these systems with considerable accuracy if we want to spend the compute resources. For example, simulating our own solar system with far more than 3 bodies in play can be done with a high degree of accuracy to timescales far beyond our lifetimes. However, the n-body problem isn’t a good analogy for your sense of personal agency anyway. You aren’t a chunk of rock floating helplessly through space. You are a human being who can take action to influence your own trajectory. You can apply pressure and course correct in a feedback loop, unlike a planet hurling through the solar system. That doesn’t mean you can influence everything, but it it does mean that it’s wrong to assume that your life is chaotic or that nothing you do matters. (FWIW, The latter feeling is a very classic, and erroneous, thought pattern present in depressive disorders. Correcting that misconception is a core principle of CBT therapy). You are not a planet hurtling helplessly through space for billions of years. You’re more like a satellite being launched optimistically into the right general area, but it still has to use the limited amount of thruster energy onboard to push itself into the right place. It doesn’t always work exactly as planned, but not using the thrusters at all would assure failure.