Butterfly Effect
Why I Don’t Believe in the Butterfly Effect, Part 12
Part 12 of 12: Conclusion
I have reached the end of my series of essays. Let me summarize the whole series:
The butterfly effect is the idea that a system is so chaotic that if you changed the initial conditions by even the tiniest amount, then after some time has passed, you will end up with completely different results. It is the idea that little things set off chain reactions that cause big things. Basically, the butterfly effect is the idea that changing one thing changes everything (see Part 1).
But the butterfly effect is a logical fallacy. The fallacy lies in assuming that there was only one node in world history. There is not.
The universe either is or is not deterministic. If it is deterministic, then there are zero nodes in world history, while if it is not deterministic, there are millions of nodes in world history.
If the universe is deterministic, then changing one thing doesn’t change everything because you can’t change one thing, while if the universe is not deterministic, then changing one thing doesn’t change everything because there are so many other things yet to be determined. (See Part 4.)
The trick to disproving butterfly effect arguments is to ask the question, “How did the probability change?” and to imagine a graph of probability over time (See Part 5.) Likewise, the correct way to answer questions about alternative history is to talk about how the probability of something would have been different, or how the expected value of something would have been different (see Part 8).
Thank you for reading my series of essays. These essays mean a lot to me. In fact, the reason why I decided to create an account on Medium was just so I could have a platform through which I could publish this series of essays (although I do plan to post other things after this).
I started writing these essays in February 2019, more than a year ago (although the main ideas had been in my head for some years before that). My initial plan was to write one big essay, but as the months went on, I kept adding more details and more sections. Eventually, I realized it was way too long, so I decided to break it up into parts and post each part separately.
I would like to thank several people who helped me along the way. I would like to thank my brother, Stephen, who reviewed several of the essays and who gave me helpful suggestions about how to make them clearer and easier to read. I would like to thank Dr. Mehmet Yildiz, who invited me to Illumination and who gave me advice about how to better use Medium. And I would like to thank Daniella Mini, whose article about why the slippery slope isn’t true inspired me to add Part 10 to this series. (There were originally going to be eleven essays, rather than twelve).
The next time you hear someone promote the idea of the butterfly effect — whether they’re talking about the weather, the plot of a sci-fi movie, a parallel universe where Kennedy didn’t get killed, or the events of their own lives — you can correct them by using the arguments that I have expounded in these essays. Remember, the trick to disproving butterfly effect arguments is to ask the question, “How did the probability change?”
Other parts of this series:
Part 2: The Butterfly Effect in Pop Culture
Part 3: The Wrong Way to Disprove It
Part 5: Responding to Arguments in Favor of the Butterfly Effect
Part 6: Exceptions (And Why They Aren’t Really Exceptions)
Part 7: Three Wrong Ways to Discuss Alternative History
Part 8: The Right Way to Discuss Alternative History
Part 9: How I Would Interpret Lorenz’s Observations
