I’m not sure if this belongs here in the philosophy section or not, but I’m very, very, very curious about the Chaos Theory. My friend just saw the Butterfly Effect and I’m seeing it tongiht. I’ve heard some what of a summary on the chaos theory.
i.e. if a butterfly were to flap its wings in China, it’ll cause a hurricane in North America.
I’m just wondering if there is more to it than that. Yes I know I have the power of the internet at my reach. But I truly prefer reading your ideas, opinions and summaries on a subject.
my knowledge on this subject matter is very, very limited. although a physics major, i study space science. anyhow, i’ll tell you what i know of it. basically, the underlying principle is order in seemingly chaotic systems. in the lab, we have a clear box setup on a vibrating platform. the only thing in the box is sand. taking captures of this randomly vibrating sand, we see intricate geometrical, regular patterns formed by the sand. These patterns change depending on the frequency of vibrations. thus randomly interacting particles do seem to have some mathematical order.
Unless there’s much more to the situation, I’d have to argue the basic premise of this study. The “seemingly chaotic system”, the movements of particles of sand, are in fact not random, but are direct results of a constant pattern of the “wavelengths” (for lack of more credible word) of the vibrations. Eventually, the sand will work it’s way into a system based on size and shape, ie., the larger ones staying atop and smaller, easily manueverable ones falling to the bottom. Just like shaking up a bag of raw Ramen-noodles. Once there is some semblance of physical order in the sand, unbeknownst to the viewer, the vibrations will cause whatever patterns they do, based on steady, constant rhythms, which are noticed by the viewer. It is merely a system of cause and effect, just as calculating a wave in the ocean’s breaking point, all easily producable if you know all portions of the equation. Unless that was the point of the study … that nothing is random.
The Chaos theory was originally forumulated by a frustrated meteorologist who after plugging in seemingly congruous calculations got two completely different scenarios. He was using a computer to predict weather, and in an attempt to see if the same thing would happen over and over again, he took calculations out to the 6th decimal place from a model that had already ran…He plugged these numbers back into the computer, and a completely different weather pattern resulted. Their were hurricans instead of droughts, and so on.
He quickly realized that the problem was no in that the same thing can’t happen twice, but in his calculations. He realized that no matter how exact lab experiments are, we will never be able to have all the information, and thus we will never be able to predict anything perfectly. As I understand, it’s similar to the uncertainty principle, but not the same…
It basically says that small events can result in major changes in any system. And our inability to predict and know these small events result in our inability to predict with certain accuracy the results.
Something as small as a butterfly flapping its wings could infact cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. and thus create a hurricane where the drought was supposed to be…The Unknowable Universe…
The term “chaos”, then, is only used when comparing it with our understanding of it, and our ability to calculate it. It is in fact a representation of having nothing “random”, as that “seemingly (very important word there - because it drags reality through our perceptions) random” butterfly has direct correlational effects throughout the world. It’s considered chaotic, not of it’s own nature, but when compared to ours.
DISCLAIMER: I bid my apologies to all the moderators out there for continuing this not-so-philosophical thread here.
Nihilistic, you are the friggin man!!! You guys have no clue how cool it is to have you guys at a moments notice. It is awesome! AWESOME I tell you. I personally liked the Butterfly Effect, I thought it was neat and original, kind of like the Memento of 2004. In a way. I might have been more crazy about the movie had I not watch the Passion of Christ right before it, but it’s cool.
In the movie (spoilers ahead, be warned) this kid has the ability to go back into moments in his life and change things. Minor changes in his past always leads to disastrous outcomes.
Now the question is posed. Do you really think that if one had the power to change minor moments in the past, would it really change your or another persons entire life? If you had gone to the bathroom on your third day of 1st grade at 10 instead of at 2pm, would you be the same person you are now?
I think there are some very philosophical ideas floating around here. Such as: is there anything that is not an effect, that truly is random. Remembering that order doesn’t necessarily have a purpose (ie, doesn’t have a reason to be there other than it’s own biology.) The human understanding, or calculability of these things, has little do with their existence.
And in a less-philosophical moment, it is plausible that a minute occurance would have far-reaching effects, depending on the significance of the event changed. Going to the bathroom at 2pm instead of 10, I ran into that girl Sally in the hallway, where we chatted, it boosted my confidence, which later made me more confident in a play-ground struggle over a four-square dispute, which I won, which evolved into a (seemingly insignificant) series of experiences, acting as a snowball downhill, gaining momentum and girth, ultimately changing characteristics to the point of my very being … and thus my future has been altered considerably. But this would have to be done in one of those rare, over-looked, life-altering moments, outnumbered by the more numerous (mostly) unconsequential pisses I’ve took.
Chaos: The aperiodic, unpredictable behavior arising in a system extremely sensitive to variations in initial conditions and exhibited by a phenomena such as turbulent flow, long-range weather patterns, and cardiac arrhythmia.
Chaos is too hard to predict, but it isn’t indeterministic. Randomness isn’t accounted for in chaos theory. Undefined external variables are. It’s not “randomness”, it’s “apparent randomness”.
This was actually the premise behind Pi, that in fact nothing is random, only too intricate for humanity’s current applicability. I wasn’t actually sure with the above posts, was just writing what made sense to me - but some reading up on Chaos yesterday confirmed it.
The basic biological premise is that until recently, it seemed as though atoms lived and died completely at random. Essentially, there was no biological/ physical difference between an atom about to die and one flourishing. Chance seemed to separate the living from the dead. However, they’re starting to believe there must be innumerable factors involved, perhaps even eventually resulting in the breaking down of the atom - see what makes it tick, so to speak.
And the bipeds from the Miocene epoch would be quite appaled to see their descendants flying through the air on metal beasts, or communicating ideas to people across the world via an electronic spider-web. While it won’t happen in my life-time, don’t count the possibilities down. That is, until 1 billion years when all the water on Earth boils …
He didn’t say that we could never predict anything (enough to make planes and trains and such), he said that we’d never be able to predict anything perfectly. I think that’s shown by Godel’s Theorem.
“how can you argue that nothing is random? Doesn’t that go against the Chaos theory?”
In one way, everything could be “random”. I mean, in chaos theory, nothing can be precisely predicted because there are million of nonlinear variables that are unnoticable to even the most perceiving eyes and minds. Take the falling of a leaf for example. The tree’s “make-up” tells it when to release the leaf, but even then the leaf hangs on for a period of unknown time because of the weather, the environment and so on. Then when the leaf finally falls, the wind, the hieght off the ground, and the exact shape, structure, and weight of the leaf are taken into account the variables will always escalate to chaos.
THAT is chaos theory.
Also you could argue that nothing is random, because everything relies on a variable yet actions and factors will always set those variables. So how could the rolling of a dice be random? Well, all of the millions of complex factors WILL determine your result. The thrust of your roll, the exact position of the dice and your hand, the terrain the dice is rolled on, the twist you put in the through… Theoretically you could find all of those variables and set them up and manipulate the dice.
So you see both sides can be agued or infact put together!
I think freedom runner is on to something here. I’m taking a class on chaos theory right now, and what i’ve managed to salvage from all of the abstract mumbo-jumbo is that some well-defined systems seem to behave chaotically. The problem is that mathematical models are never good enough to describe “real-world” systems exactly. There are just too many variables. However, equations like the logistic model are perfectly defined in and of themselves. So there are equations that are measurably chaotic, but in the real world, a system’s chaotic tendencies are only as reliable as its mathematical model.
