The Butterfly Effect

the theory goes that if a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the planet it will cause a massive hurricane on the other side of the planet.

not so, but its a great saying none the less (and a good film actually).
so my questions is, if you belevie this and beleive in god why did he make this animal so powerfull?

The butterfly effect actually has to do with causal chains, and normally has a bit of a deterministic edge to it. It has nothing to do with any form of science; it's just psuedo-philosophy. I think an alternate form of the theory is called Chaos Theory or maybe I'm getting two things confused. If a butterfly had have flapped it's wings differently in the past, would that have led to alter the entire state of things in the distant future?


And the movie sucked.

Actually the Butterfly Effect refers to the act of strapping a butterfly vibrator on your best girl under her clothes while you hold the remote in your pocket.

At regular intervals you trigger the remote and watch her try and maintain her composure as she schmoozes at a bar.

[Choobus]

The butterfly effect isd a real scientific term that comes from Chaos theory. It is, however, quite useless because all it is saying is that when you have a system that is very sensitive to it's initial condition then even tiny changes in that condition (such as the displacement of air molecvules by a butterfly) can lead to enormous changes in the long term as the system develops. This is why it's hard to predict the wqeather over long periods of time. I recall reading an article a while back that said something to the effect that this is not as true as it seems because there are some subtle long term effects of strange attractors that partially suppress the extreme dependence on initial conditions. It's slightly disingenuous to say that a butterfly flapping its wings "causes" a hurricane. It could just as easily prevent one from opccuring.

[Mog]

The term "Butterfly Effect" originated in the Ray Bradbury Short fiction "A Sound of Thunder" which involved time-travellers on a dinosaur hunt. They were only allowed to kill certain dinosaurs that were about to die anyway, but one of the hunters accidently stepped on a butterfly, dramatically affecting the future world they go back to.

I like my definition better.

[Choobus]

Mog wrote

The term "Butterfly Effect" originated in the Ray Bradbury Short fiction "A Sound of Thunder" which involved time-travellers on a dinosaur hunt. They were only allowed to kill certain dinosaurs that were about to die anyway, but one of the hunters accidently stepped on a butterfly, dramatically affecting the future world they go back to.

that's not true.

Bradbury did use a butterfly but it's just a coincidence.

Edward Lorentz coined the term in the 50's after a colleague suggested that his new theory (that grew into Chaos theory), if true, suggested that the flapping of a birds wings could lead to intense weather systems (Lorentz was a meteorologist). He agreed and started using the idea in his lectures, but he chanmged it to butterfly.

[a different tim]

Mog wrote

The term "Butterfly Effect" originated in the Ray Bradbury Short fiction "A Sound of Thunder" which involved time-travellers on a dinosaur hunt. They were only allowed to kill certain dinosaurs that were about to die anyway, but one of the hunters accidently stepped on a butterfly, dramatically affecting the future world they go back to.

There was supposed to be a film of that. Anyone know what happened to it?

[Choobus]

a different tim wrote

There was supposed to be a film of that. Anyone know what happened to it?

I hope they don't have Aston Kutcher in that one as well. That dude is a fucking tard.