Why I Don’t Believe in the Butterfly Effect, Part 11
Part 11 of 12: Why I Care about This Topic
I dislike the butterfly effect on philosophical grounds: in my opinion, if the butterfly effect were actually true, then our lives would have no meaning.
At first, that may seem like an absurd statement. The butterfly effect is a theory about the weather. Why should a theory about the weather imply that life is meaningless?
But it’s not just about the weather. Scientists have also found chaotic behavior in numerous other systems, including the motion of asteroids, the economy, and even the behavior of groups of people. That’s pretty significant: if the economy and human behavior are both chaos, then I think it’s fair to say the whole world is chaos. Furthermore, if some systems are chaotic, and those systems affect all other systems, then I would think that the whole composite system is chaotic. So the sense I’m getting from modern science (perhaps incorrectly) is that the whole world is a chaotic system.
And if the whole world is a chaotic system, then our lives have no meaning.
Why do I say this? Well, let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s suppose that the butterfly effect, in its purest form, was actually true. Suppose that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil really did cause a tornado in Texas. Suppose that every little thing you did set off a cascade of unintended effects that would ultimately have very significant consequences for your life and for the world. Suppose that all large-scale events, both in your life and in the world, were actually determined by the most trivial actions. If that were the case, then…………
1. You could never know whether something you were doing was a good idea or a bad idea.
2. You could never know whether you were making the world a better place or a worse place.
3. You would have no control over your own destiny.
4. You could never make incremental progress towards a goal.
5. You could never make up for a mistake you made.
6. You would be in a position of extremely high responsibility in everything you do, and you could never catch a break from this responsibility.
7. Everything in the world would be determined by luck.
In short, if the butterfly effect were true, then our lives would have no meaning. Thank God it’s not actually true.
We humans need to believe that we have at least some control over our own destiny. If we didn’t, we would have no sense of purpose, no goals, and no peace of mind. But if the butterfly effect were true, we would have no control over our own destiny. Thus, if the butterfly effect were true, we could have no sense of purpose in our lives.
Related to this, in order for us to have peace of mind, we also have to believe that some things don’t matter. If everything in the world were extremely important, that would be way too much responsibility. According to the butterfly effect, in its purest form, my decision of which shirt to wear today determines whether or not World War III will break out ten years from now. And if that were how the world worked, that would be intolerable. You could never guess the effects of your actions, and you could never catch a break from your extremely high responsibility.
If someone really, truly believed in the butterfly effect, they would be miserable. They would eventually just give up and surrender to the chaos of everything. And they could never have a sense of purpose in their life.
As discussed in Part 2 of this series, the butterfly effect is sometimes portrayed as something beautiful. But what you can see here is that the butterfly effect is not a beautiful idea; it is a horrifying idea, because if it were actually true, then our lives would have no meaning. We should all be glad that it isn’t true.
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