Chaos theory

[polymath]

According to chaos theory, real world physical systems often exhibit chaotic behavior, where a really small disturbance can have large, unexpected consequences at a later time. An example of this is the 'butterfly effect', where the disturbance from the flapping of a butterfly's wings can cause a storm in some distant location some time later.

If really small things can have such large consequences, how can an individual plan his/her actions so that they result in good things? Even the smallest things we do or leave undone cause a disturbance in the world and can have huge unpredictable negative consequences in this chaotic world. There's no way, for instance, to predict all the things that result from me posting this thread.

EDIT: Also read this: http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/documents/cserproceedingspdfsppts/cser_bai.pdf

To those of us in tune with the complexity universe, we are mindful that what seems only very minute and insignificant may be causally linked to major, significant events later on. I’m referring to the so-called “butterfly effect” in chaotic dynamics. We cannot avoid responsibility because we cannot avoid responding in some ways to each and every person and situation we encounter and thereby affecting the world in some ways. The first requisite to being moral is to worry about the effects our action or very presence have in the world. It is to worry about the consequences of our responses to the world. Even a non-response can have a significant consequence. But as lim ited beings operating in an under-determinate, non-linear universe, we can never know with certainty how our action will affect the world. Given this ignorance, how should one act as a moral being committed to human and planetary flourishing?

 

[panic in paradise]

we live in the 'chaos theory' lol

what we pick and chose as a comfort to ourselves amongst chaos is what we determine to be, stable, until proven wrong.


every coin has two sides, it is you who creates the game by spinning it, it is you who decides if which way it lay, is right, because it is you who takes the chance of being wrong.

 

[psychoblast]

The Butterfly Effect is largely misunderstood. A butterfly flapping its wings will NOT cause a raging storm hundreds or thousands of miles away. A storm is caused by many factors, shifting air currents, etc. If by "cause" you mean that "but for this event, then thant later event would not have happened," then any storm has literally billions, if not infinite, causes, and you take ANY of them away, and the storm does not happen, or nto exactly the same place or intensity, etc.

From this, it is clear the flapping butterly wings are, at best, one billionth to blame for the later storm. The Butterly Effect is tossed around like the storm was ONLY produced due to the butterly flapping its wings, putting way too much blame on the poor little butterfly whose contribution, EVEN IF A NECESSARY PRECURSOR, was still relatively insignificant.

The answer to the bigger question posed -- why do anything if it might have adverse, unintended consequences -- can be answered in a few ways. Perhaps the simplest is this: It is the thought that counts. If you try to save a man's life and accidently bring about his death, are you a murderer or a good samaritan?

~psychoblast~

 

[atara]

If really small things can have such large consequences, how can an individual plan his/her actions so that they result in good things? Even the smallest things we do or leave undone cause a disturbance in the world and can have huge unpredictable negative consequences in this chaotic world. There's no way, for instance, to predict all the things that result from me posting this thread.

The basic idea of the dynamics of chaotic systems is that the attractor is the closure of the union of the periodic orbits. If that doesn't make any sense, maybe chaos theory is not a totally simple and obvious analogy given your level of math knowledge. That is, it helps to know some chaos theory before you like worry about the implications of chaos theory on the results of your actions.

Imagine I was planning to drive a car like this: I make a list of instructions describing my entire journey, on what time to turn, how hard to push the gas and brake pedals, and so forth. Then, I memorize the instructions, and drive blindfolded. Even if there are no other cars on the road, I've clearly lost my mind! A slight mistake in how hard to hit the gas at one point could lead to me being ten feet from where I thought I'd be at some other point, which would compound on itself and eventually I'd run into a tree or a wall or something. This is basically the foundation of chaos theory: a small error in a prediction at one time leads to subsequent predictions being wronger and wronger.

Driving a car is not impossible: instead of trying to predict the entire journey, we drive with our eyes open, and we constantly update our expectations based on what is actually happening. Unfortunately, you can't do it perfectly, and you can't always pay attention to what is going on because you're not in the same room or something, but being attentive is generally far more important than being a Ramanujan-esque genius.

The most difficult part for many people comes when you realize your old prediction was wrong, that you've made a mistake and need to change what you're doing. Social conservatives have a hard time with this.

 

[polymath]

The basic idea of the dynamics of chaotic systems is that the attractor is the closure of the union of the periodic orbits. If that doesn't make any sense, maybe chaos theory is not a totally simple and obvious analogy given your level of math knowledge. That is, it helps to know some chaos theory before you like worry about the implications of chaos theory on the results of your actions.

I'm currently writing my master's thesis majoring in physics... I definitely know what chaos theory is, even though it wasn't discussed a lot in the undergraduate curriculum (mostly in relation to nonlinear oscillators in the classical mechanics course). I can't define exactly what a strange attractor or a Lyapunov exponent is without looking it up from a textbook, but I'm not a total layman either.

The major idea I was thinking of was: what's the role of moral responsibility in situations where it's impossible to predict the results of your decisions. Of course in a chaotic situation the probabilities of 'good' and 'bad' outcomes from your actions are about equal...

 

[panic in paradise]

I'm currently writing my master's thesis majoring in physics... I definitely know what chaos theory is, even though it wasn't discussed a lot in the undergraduate curriculum (mostly in relation to nonlinear oscillators in the classical mechanics course). I can't define exactly what a strange attractor or a Lyapunov exponent is without looking it up from a textbook, but I'm not a total layman either.

The major idea I was thinking of was: what's the role of moral responsibility in situations where it's impossible to predict the results of your decisions. Of course in a chaotic situation the probabilities of 'good' and 'bad' outcomes from your actions are about equal...

define free will.