The Butterfly Effect

Chaos - the inherent unpredictability in the behaviour of a complex natural system.

You have an after-work drink, maybe two, drinking slowly. You leave under the legal limit for driving, arriving home safely.

You have an after-work drink, maybe two, drinking slowly. You leave under the legal limit for driving. A car veers into your path, you swerve narrowly avoiding a collision. Shaken, you give the other driver a bollocking as they drive away. You arrive home safely.

You have an after-work drink, maybe two, drinking slowly. You leave under the legal limit for driving. A car veers into your path, you swerve but the cars collide. You’re hospitalised with serious injuries that prevent you from returning to work. Off work, you develop depression but it goes undiagnosed. Your marriage falters, you become addicted to prescription medications taking a lethal overdose which the coroner rules as ‘‘misadventure.

You have an after-work drink and leave. A car veers into your path. you react quickly, avoiding a collision. The street is busy and the other driver ploughs into a taxi, killing the driver instantly. You help at the scene, shaken, you arrive home safely.

You have an after-work drink and leave. A car veers into your path. you react quickly, avoiding a collision. The street is busy and the other driver hits a diplomatic car waiting at traffic lights killing the passenger, the nation’s Prime Minister.

That’s the butterfly effect. It’s not about butterflies or typhoons, it’s about chance, luck and randomness. It’s about the chaos of complex systems whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to the sensitivity to small changes in conditions. A floating iceberg, a chance virus transmission, an after work drink . . . or two.

Scientific advancement has seduced us to believe we’re in control, that the world has order. But war, icebergs, depressions, tyrants, pandemics, climate change, random crime all bear witness to the fact that it’s the illusion of control. Your world, the world, is always a singular moment away from chaos.

Each year in New Zealand, hundreds of people die in road accidents, far more than died in the first covid-19 wave. Next year, hundreds will again die, statistics make this unavoidable. Take a fatal accident, rewind the victim’s life an hour and change a small action. The chance they arrive at the moment in time and space that lead to their death trends to zero. Stop for coffee. Don’t stop for coffee. Drive five kilometres over, or under, the speed limit. Take a left. Take a right . . .

Chaos.