I discovered the key to success.
It is to keep my mouth shut and my hands working.
For as long as possible.
#Writingtolearn
Butterfly Effect
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
~Albert Einstein
Do you think flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil would set off a tornado in Texas?
Edward Lorenz a mild-mannered MIT mathematician and meteorologist certainly thinks so.
He came to that conclusion based on shortcut he took in his weather prediction simulation.
Since I first heard about it recently, I Googled around a bit (yep, I still Google and don’t use ChatGPT as often) and found some really cool links to learn more on this.
Butterfly effect in essence says that seemingly small insignificant causes can have massively significant effects.
One way to look at this would be say that everything (no matter how trivial) matters or that nothing does!
If your interested in what was the experiment and how did he end with these results? You can check this MIT page. It also links to his paper on the topic.
One of my favourite blogs of all time, has a really thorough post which talks about Butterfly Effect in different contexts. It also has a lot of wonderful historic examples and introduces you to several other related concepts.
If you prefer video, Vertasium does a really good job explaining some of scientific history behind the concepts that led to this breakthrough and also touches upon the experiment. Or you could check this short documentary celebrating Lorenz’s contribution along with that of a fellow researcher.
If you’d want to introduce kids to this idea, If you give a mouse a Cookie could be an excellent starting point.
You can also see the role of butterfly effect in this wonderful conversation with Morgan Housel (43 mins, 12 sec on wards). Where he talks about his near death experience as a 17 year old (I got goose bumps listening to it like the fifth time) and also how the United States of America as we know it today wouldn’t have existed if the wind hadn’t changed it course (seemingly randomly) during the battle of long island.
If I observe my own life I can (and you can too) trace it all the way back to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. I don’t have a sense of how to go beyond that (please tell me if you do)!