Chaos
Chaos theory - commonly known as "the butterfly effect" - has always interested me. But for some reason, chaotic behavior has never been a big hit with popular culture - at least not in a way that makes sense. (But my woes on that for another day.
This is a picture of what is called the Lorenz attractor. Not surprisingly, it has "wings" and looks a lot like a butterfly. Lorenz himself used to speak of the system's beautiful butterfly wings. Later on, popular culture absorbed the idea - with a twist. The parable that is now most commonly used to explain chaotic behavior is the one about butterflies flapping their wings in Japan causing hurricanes in California.
The idea of chaos comes from a fairly simple concept (called sensitive dependence on initial conditions). If you start in two very very very similar initial conditions, and yet they are not exactly the same, you will end up with very different results after some time - i.e., the situation can be set up arbitrarily similar (99.999999% similar) to the intended initial circumstance. Still, the very fact that they are slightly different will completely alter results over time.
I tend to believe that this is a pretty telling model of more things in life. Essentially, at any given moment when you do some specifict act, even pretty damn minor thing, it can effectively alter the course of your life - eliminating an infinity of alternative possiblities. This, of course, has pretty strange philosophical implications. (Note: Yes, I presuppose the ability of choice. It becomes a cow's opinion if you don't presuppose it - it's moo.)
This is a picture of what is called the Lorenz attractor. Not surprisingly, it has "wings" and looks a lot like a butterfly. Lorenz himself used to speak of the system's beautiful butterfly wings. Later on, popular culture absorbed the idea - with a twist. The parable that is now most commonly used to explain chaotic behavior is the one about butterflies flapping their wings in Japan causing hurricanes in California.
The idea of chaos comes from a fairly simple concept (called sensitive dependence on initial conditions). If you start in two very very very similar initial conditions, and yet they are not exactly the same, you will end up with very different results after some time - i.e., the situation can be set up arbitrarily similar (99.999999% similar) to the intended initial circumstance. Still, the very fact that they are slightly different will completely alter results over time.
I tend to believe that this is a pretty telling model of more things in life. Essentially, at any given moment when you do some specifict act, even pretty damn minor thing, it can effectively alter the course of your life - eliminating an infinity of alternative possiblities. This, of course, has pretty strange philosophical implications. (Note: Yes, I presuppose the ability of choice. It becomes a cow's opinion if you don't presuppose it - it's moo.)
posted by arun at 4:03 PM
3 Comments:
Send me any readings you got on this, I would love to look into this more. Thanks. Btw, I would enjoy a post on aff action sometime. My thoughts on that aren't set in stone yet.
mooooo
I love chaos. My girlfriend got me into it, so I read Jame's Gleick's book on Chaos (which I would recommend, although its probably written for too much of a lay audience for your taste.. but its a quick read, esp w/ regards to the hilarious stories about Feigenbaum). It also motivated me to start looking into Systems Biology and stuff. Really hot stuff :-)
Oh yeah I agree with you, however, the material in my classes wasn't that hard, it made sense after I learned it myself, it wasn't that bad, it's just that the teacher didn't know what parts would challenge students and other problems.
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