"The Butterfly Effect"
 

Recently, I have been contemplating life in general, and it amazes me that I can attribute huge portions of my life to tiny, meaningless (so I thought) decisions throughout my life.

Here is an example, to illustrate what I mean...

When I was 16 or 17, I walked into my local credit union to apply for a credit card. I wanted to start building my credit early, and after talking with this lady that helped me, she suggested, rather out of the blue, that I apply there.

To make a long story short, that's what got me involved in finances, and from there I went to a loan officer, mortgage rep, and now mortgage broker.

Had I not gone in that day, and at that time when she wasn't speaking with someone else, the entire course of my life would have been altered, as I never would have considered applying there, most likely never getting involved in the financial industry.

I have several of these life-altering "little" decisions that I can very clearly distinguish, and it just kinda blows my mind how everything had to happen just as it did for things to turn out the way they are now.

To think that had I put off applying for that credit card for one week, maybe a day, maybe even an hour, how drastically different my life might be today really puts everything into perspective, and helps me realize how lucky I am that I am in the life situation I am in right now.

Please feel free to share your thoughts/opinions, and also any examples of the small choices that you make that have had a huge impact on your life. I am curious as to whether or not I am the only one that really pays attention to these things or not. I very well just might be crazy :D

Agreed, the butterfly effect is not just a philosiphical statement, it's a science. If I hadn't have back off at a fight two years ago, i might be dead because the kid had a knife.

If I didn't stop drinking I might be into some stuff that I don't want to be into now.

If I hadn't watched a James Dean film, then I'd still be a pushover :lol:

No, you couldn't be farther from crazy. I have thought about this subject many times.

Take for example my girlfriend now, she came by my house a few months ago to talk to my sister. If I had been gone at the time, as I so commonly am, I wouldn't be in love with her now, as I am. Such little decisions and events can, and do, change the course of your entire life. But I try not to think about these things too much, cause it'll make your eyes go crossed.

But let me ask you, does this mean that you believe in fate?

Fate, i think fate is different this seems more free choice then anything else. But i could see fate and this being related, or working closely together.

Yes, sometimes the effect of the tiniest things on one's life can be mind-boggling.

Unfortunately, i don't think there is anything very special about it that would lead one to believe in fate. of course one thinks back and attributes his current state to a decision made far in the past, but no matter where you end up, you can attribute it to something you did far in the past. you think fate secured the wonderful life you have now? maybe it could have been even better; maybe it could have been somewhat worse, and you still would have counted yourself lucky.

you cannot be where you are without where you were. this is not a product of fate but simply a fact of life.

I would prefer not to believe in fate, as that would take away my "free will." and the ability to make my own decision.

I just find it amazing that the smallest of decisions, decisions that you don't think will affect you 20 minutes from now, have the ability to direct your life in a such a titanic manner, and usually you are unable to determine if a given situation was one of those moments until you look back on it from quite a way in the future.

To think that deciding that I need to take the garbage out could initiate the chain of events that change my life forever is nigh uncomprehendible to me. The most difficult part to accept is I won't know until it is too late if it is for the better or worse.

A similar story to the one I first posted, but this one with negative consequences involves a car accident.

A friend of mine needed a ride to work, so I picked him up & dropped him off downtown. It was really shitty weather, and was very icy out. On the drive back to my house, I inadvertantly passed the turn that I usually would take to get home. Not a real big problem, as there plenty of other routes I could take. Well, to make a long story short, I took a different route, and just as I was heading down the street this lady came flying around a corner, doing 360's, hit the car in front of me, straightened out, hit me head on, spun off, and her rear end then hit my vehicle again.

Imagine, if I had taken my normal route home, or taken any of the other streets, or been stopped at a stoplight, or driven a few miles an hour faster or slower, I would not have been involved in that accident. To look at the greater picture, though, if the lady driving the car hadn't been going to fast, had left her house a moment later, ect, or the people in front of me not been there, the accident may not have happened at all, or at least it would have been completely different.

Had any one of us made a different decision, things most likely wouldn't have turned out the way they did. When I think about the probably hundreds of decisions that had to be made to bring that accident together, I sometimes find it difficult to believe in coincidence...

Fate and Free Will are a matter of perspective. Both exist in my opinion. From the perspective of the person making decisions you can do as you choose, but chances are in general you are going to be concerned about your well being to a certain degree. This is one aspect of predictability. From the outside perspective you are making choices that are governed by unkown factors that will control your life. But you are unaware of them as far as your perspective is concerned you are just making decisions. From an all knowing perspective all your decisions and the factors around it are predictable. We have no proof of such an all knowing perspective yet, although intuition tells some it exists.

But what could really mess with your head is the idea that you're not lucky at all! In fact, while you were inside talking to that lady, across the street some random guy simply walked up and gave away 50 million dollars to a guy who was wearing a red shirt, having determined to do so. (Let's just for the sake of argument presume your shirt was red), so are you in fact ridiculously unlucky?

I dig what you're saying though.

I mean if I hadn't bought Breakin II: Electric Boogaloo, I'd still have my soul and sanity.

No such thing as luck really, just byproducts of cause and effect. After recieving the millions of dollars for free, the man bought the biggest slab of crack ever and died a crackhead's death.

Yeah, this is crazy.

If I hadn't invited Nwlinkvxd over to my house the day I did, who knows where we would be now. I'm glad I did.

Well, I did not mean to imply that I believe in fate. It's just quite easy to do so when considering this topic. When you look back upon all your past decisions and how they got you were you are, it's oftentimes impossible to imagine it any other way. Although, of course it's impossible to do so because the past, and your decisions, can never be changed. But, when you look back and can't imagine things any other way, it becomes very easy to believe in fate, that maybe your choices aren't yours at all, becasue once they're made, they're made, and there's no changing that. I'm just saying that I can see it from both sides. I am, however, more comfortable with not believing in fate, as I like to believe I'm in control of things.

Yet, you forget the small decisions you make, and remember the more obvious ones. If you dig down, you find something, though.

When I decided some seven years ago to live in an off-campus dorm over an on-campus, there really wasn't much logical motivation. I was on the waiting list for on-campus, while spots were open outside. I decided I didn't want to wait.

Whom I met there ending up leading directly to whom I ended up dating, and the plot twisted me 400 miles north, minus girlfriend, in a profession in which I'd never before been interested. Journalism: Long, late hours, sometimes asked to come in on holidays and weekends, and relatively low pay. I'd just wanted to be a writer, in some plum dream of hitting the bestseller jackpot and living off of royalties and advances on following books. Not working the corporate 9-5ish. Or working the counter at your local Starbucks, for that matter, or digging ditches, or mounting a revolution in a small, distant country.

So my job is something I'd never been interested in, I'm living in a city I that never caught my eye as a career-long home--and I don't think I'd be <i>commuting</i> to success if it wasn't for that inconsequential mental coin flip. The reasons for that last one are too much to go into here, but, in short, where I live is the prime location in the country, maybe the world, for my kind of work.

I totally believe in this, but I don't believe in fate. I believe like saying talking to that credit person at that time started the series of choices he would make to becoming the mortgage broker, not that his fate was set as being a mortgage broker after that first meeting.

It's like this one time my dad was about to go to the bank, but I couldn't find something, so I asked him where it was. He took the extra 5 minutes to go get it for me, and when he got to the bank, it was closed because someone had just robbed it. Had he not taken the time to help me, he would have been there.

Here is a good butterfly effect sort of, not that I know it is true: If there had been like .00000000000000000000000000000001 or so more or less grams of matter right before the big bang every event ever would not have happened or would be different.

I smile and say good morning every day to people I see on a daily basis.

I believe it's my way of contributing to a better day to other people who don't even ever get noticed.

Ah, but does it get noticed? Maybe one of those people you said good morning to will have a slightly better mood throughout the day, and make a slightly different "insignificant" decision than they would have, forever changing their lives?

Perhaps one of them is a crazy sociopath that was planning on murdering all the higher ups, but when one took notice of him/her and said good morning, you may have averted a catastrophe.

No decision we make, regardless of how insignificant at the time, can be truly realized until all the consequences of that decision are laid out, and there is a very good possibility that the "ripple effect" will never end, and even if it does, it would be nearly impossible to distinguish.

Life is truly amazing...

All this is just amazing! Think about the nature of planet earth. Isn't it another lucky coincidence that there's the orbit movement and the sun heat that make it possible for us to exist? They are all coincidences.

Oh, I agree. I notice those things so often. It's usually the choices that seem small that alter our life so drastically.

I agree, except for me these "turning point" decisions are always ones that I would not normally make.

Take for instance, how I got close to my GF. If I hadn't decided to go to that party at the last minute (before that point I had always avoided that type of situation), If i decided to leave when I was having a horrible time, if my friend didn't get violently ill, things could be completely different, and I might not be so happily with the girl now.

Yea. If my friend hadn't drunkenly made out with this girl at a party I wouldn't be marrying her, or if she hadn't gotten a computer.

ive had a few of those, but they are mostly other peoples butterflies i see, my own, lets just say im a thinker not a doer, i carefully consider anything life changing before doing it, and i often slap myself in the face and go "what on earth are you doing? is this what you want to do?"

I do believe in fate/predestination. I'm not a nut about it, I still go about doing things normally, it's just something I believe in. Now, while I believe in this, I do still believe that people are responsible for their actions. You still have free will, your choices still matter. It is simply that your choice and the outcome are predestined by your past experience.

Now Dianetics makes this even easier, with the risk of the scientology connotation. If Dianetics is a real thing, and not just some idle fantasy, then it backs up my beliefs.

To kind of take a step back, here's an easy way to explain it: You are faced with a choice. The decision you make is based on your past experience, and the current situation. In an infinite number of realities, if all the variables are the same, the outcome will be the same. Nothing is random. You are still responsible for your actions.

Hm. If anyone wants me to go into more detail, I will, but I'm sure some will have a lot to disagree with.

the butterfly effect is the most famous example of chaos theory in action

one of the points about chaotic systems is the sensitivity to initial conditions - i.e. for a very small change at the beginning you end up somewhere completely different

another thing about chaos is there are patterns and ways of predicting some aspects of the system.

chaotic systems tend to be driven by an external force that keeps them from equilibrium e.g. weather, driven by solar heating

This is why I believe in Fate.

As a philosophy major, it kills me to acknowledge that free will probably doesn't exist. Humans are physical machines restricted by physical laws. We aren't an exception to the rule.

I'm personally very much against such thought (mostly in a weberian sense, if you know what I mean). I mean, if free will doesn't exist, how can I be able to do something completely random (if you don't count things like gravity etc. as physical laws restricting us, because surely they do restrict us, but that is not what I mean). If I see it correct, fate would mean that everything would be causal.

Let me explain further. Our conciousness is, when you break it down, a set of chemical and electrical reactions. For instance, if you see a rose, the light enters our eye, strikes the optic nerve, which sends an impulse to our brain, which then makes a decision to reach out and grasp this rose. All those actions are governed by phsyical properties. All of these actions are behaving just as they would outside our bodies.

The problem with this is that the whole system is extremely complex. More complex than anything humans will ever be able to grasp. This complexity gives the appearance of randomness. In fact, its so complex that two of the same actions may never happen twice, and thats why whe cant find a causal pattern. So, while you may think you are doing something completely random, perhaps that action was "fated" by those tiny switches flicking on and off.

If you follow me so far, the real interesting part is "free will" itself. Your argument may be that "well, if all is destined, then i can lay down and whatever happens happens--its fate." The idea of free will keeps us going. So, If we are here by our own choices, we have the opportunity to change them. It gives us hope.

Atleast thats my opinion. There are certainly other points and examples that could counter my arguement, but in all truth, there is no answer to this question. Free will vs. Determinism debate has been going on for as long as humanity has been around.

I think what a lot fail to realize is that believing in determinism or fate is not bleak. I'm just saying that we may, as humans, be under the illusion that we have control of our actions/thoughts/behavior.

Throw religion/spirituality into this mix, and you've got a whole new debate.

There is a wonderful story by Ray Bradbury about the impact of small things on the course of history called "The Sound of Thunder". In the story, hunters go back in time to go after dinosaurs. One man ends up killing a butterfly - with the result that, upon return to the present day, society has become totalitarian.

I wonder if this is where the term "Butterfly Effect" originated - or if the term was the inspiration for the story.

I think 'Butterfly Effect' comes from one of the founders of chaos theory - Lorenz. He had designed a weather simulator which was generally considered to be a very good model of the real weather. One day it stopped (don't know if it crashed/was turned off/whatever) and he restarted it using some figures he had from the day before. However, the figures he had on his printout were rounded to a smaller number of significant digits than the ones used internally. The result was that when the system restarted it produced an initially quite similar weather pattern, which rapidly became very different to his printouts from before the stoppage.

Rather than assuming (as I'm sure many of us would have done) that there was some problem with his system, he decided that the weather must really behave that way - and the difference between internal numbers and his printouts - at the n'th significant digit - gets magnified to a massive change.

Or in short/soundbite mode - the difference of a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world might result in a hurricane on the other.

Sadly this seems to have been extrapolated by the popular press to something about insects being able to control the weather... ;)


Edit: the actual quote (from his 1972 talk) is: Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?

You mean they don't!?!?!?!?!?

I thought a giant collective hive mind ran the planet. Now I'm scared. Who is really in charge?

YzermanS19, you are thoroughly correct.
Free will is a high-sounding myth.
It's one of those things we like to believe in...nothing more.

ART, you put simply what I was going for.

Fate isn't a pessimistic outlook. As humans, we like to think we're in control. Once you realize that, is when things get interesting.

Its just hard to get over the fact that we probably don't even have control over ourselves, let alone our future or surroundings.

NoSoup, I agree with you. When people ask what I would change in my life, I always say nothing. If I change one thing, I may not be where I am today.

I have made some bad decisions that have caused me great suffering. But I hope I have learned from them.

I can't name the amount of times some miniscule thing has changed the course of my life. Don't know if that can be considered the Butterfly Effect though.... it just happens. Just about everything anyone does changes the next thing and it builds.

To what degree of "free will" are we talking about here? I believe people do have free will, but that there are requirements/stipulations/rules placed on people by society, culture, laws, religion, physiology that pigeon hole us and limit our ability to exercise our free will.

I could go in the kitchen, grab a knife, walk out-side and hack up some kid playing down the street. I could do that. I have the ability. There's no universal equilibrium that will stop me. I choose not to do that, one cause that would violate my internal code of conduct and two I would go to jail/be killed myself. In that way I know there is free will.

Now whether or not there is some force in the universe conspiring to herd us in a particular direction through external influences...

I was under the impression that Chaos Theory had been proven false. I'm not sure where I'd heard that. Some thing about the minute changes we're talking about here end up being absorbed into complex systems. I'm no mathematician here so somebody else might know more about it than I.

Re: "The Butterfly Effect"
 

...and instead you might have ended up working at burger king and because this made you feel like a faliure you would go out one night and buy a lottery ticket and end up becoming a multi-millionaire and never feel the need to come to this website and I wouldn't be responding to this post right now instead I would be out drunk driving and accidently run over my nieghbors wife which would cause dramatic scarring in her son who would of otherwise been the president of the united states someday who decided to drop a nuclear bomb which cuased the end of all humanity. So by going to the bank that day you MAY have saved the world.

I'm sorry I might be just ignorant, but do I get you wrong if I say that your argument to back determinism is that it exists but is too complicated to be proven scientifically, because the processes are beyond human understanding? Isn't that as efficient as an argument as saying that free will does exist but it is too complicated to be explained scientifically?

And if we go to complex things (that I do not really completely understand), I think that there are scientists who argue that such thing as total randomness exists in quantum mechanics (quantum chaos). And such thing (if the theory is right) would rule out determinism.

I see where both of you are coming from. Is it the will itself that you consider a myth, or the idea of it being free?

I see that there is part of us that is 'will', our unconcious reason. Because there is always the question 'why?' to remind us that we can't conciously find a reason to do anything, unless as ART says you believe in certain things only because you like to (when is the unknown an acceptable answer?). And so we can say it is will that commands us and not only OUR actions but all other events of the universe, because we cannot apply our concept of justification to anything. So we wonder if our will is free by executing our actions and observing the results, did we succeed or did we fail? On success we sense freedom and on failure we sense otherwise. So in all events, there are these actions and opposite reactions, or so its said, but don't these 'reactions' occur simultaneously to their actions? As there is one deciding moment of the immediate outcome (the illusion of cause and effect). Aren't all things a battle of will? If we were in complete power over the universe, if our will to power was supreme over all others, then would we be free, would the will be free? Would we then need conciousness and the ego, and all things that we now call life? Could we be free as ourselves only in being what we once called god? Perhaps the will to power is a goal, and is only free when it is harnessed absolutely by something living.

It seems to me though that the will itself is not relevant to us indivdually, it is only one and it is a part of everything. And unless the exchange of energy and the transformation of forms is a goal in itself, perhaps there is none, perhaps that is the myth. The idea of a goal, of a begining and end has only been a tool to our survival. But still, why?

And on the idea of fate, the feeling that things are being determined not by you, but for you, without your concent, and beyond your ability to control. The possibility of fate is acceptable only for the weak-willed. They are right to feel a loss of control, as they choose to obey, and they must.

double post, oops!

Re: Re: "The Butterfly Effect"
 

My Point, exactly. I am simply in awe of the mysteries of life -

And I don't even get a thanks for potentially saving the world? :D

but what if you didn't save the world?

coulden't it have happened that someone else went to the bank and caused that chain of events to occure?