In 1961 Edward Lorenz was a meteorologist running a computer model to predict the weather. He cheated a little and entered a number rounded off to the nearest thousandth. He entered 0.506 instead of .506127. Seems close enough. But the resulting long-term forecast was very very different.
Sometimes I think my computer is wrong. The first thing I think is that it is a wonky vacuum tube in computer bank #2, the one over on the left wall. Okay, I don’t, but that is perhaps something like what Edward Lorenz thought. Long story short, the computer was working right, and he was on to something: very small differences at the start can lead to big differences in the outcome.
Examples:
-rolling a rug. Can you roll up a rug without getting an ice-cream cone shaped thing when you’re done? Do you see this coming and nudge it back half way and get an ice-cream cone the other way instead?
-steering a bicycle (or a car). Maybe this isn’t hard for everyone, but I could never master riding a bicycle with no hands because the tiniest little steering motion would send me swooping across the road. A, um, friend of mine said they like to see how far they can drive a car without touching the steering wheel. Same idea.
-A butterfly flapping its wings causing a storm in Texas. Poor Texas. Why do butterflies hate Texas? Never mind, I can think of some reasons.
Some of these are trite examples and we actually know how they work, they’re just sensitive. But the thing about complex systems like the weather is that it is really hard to see the connection between the change in initial conditions and the outcome. Hey, that sounds like something… oh, I know: life.
The Butterfly Effect
There are all kinds of counter-intuitive results in the natural world. When things get warmer in the arctic summer (not that I would know since our summers are just getting wetter, like I said last week. Not that I’m bitter…), there are more wolf spiders. These are little black spiders that run around on the ground eating even tinier bugs. More spiders means there will be less of the little bugs, right? Actually no. The wolf spiders, who left each other alone before, now that their population is more dense suddenly turn on each other and kill and eat each other. This is why I am afraid to go to big cities.
It would be unfair to hold the butterflies responsible for the storms in Texas. Of course, the point of that saying is that there can be so many factors and actions in a system that you never know what all the factors are that caused it. So we wouldn’t know if the butterfly caused the storm in Texas. A butterfly flapping it’s wings might end the storm in Texas. Maybe it was actually a moth that started it. (But it wasn’t me, I swear.)
We don’t need to worry about our footprint on the world that we can’t figure out, either. Phew. We don’t need to sit on flowers and keep our wings folded. Spread your wings. Flap your wings. Fly. Just ask Edward Lorenz.
After that confusing day with the computer models, he went on to coin the phrase butterfly effect to describe this phenomenon, did foundational work in chaos theory, worked at MIT and won a pile of medals in a distinguished career. All seemingly from one bad day at the office with the ‘ol computer. How fitting – perhaps his life had a bit of butterfly effect to it. True or not true, it sounds poetic and we like that sort of stuff.
What we don’t like so much are the effects we know we have on the world and can – and should – do something about. They are such a drag. You can call it your footprint, but I always thought that was a little crippling: do I really have to tiptoe through life trying to avoid footprints? I think some people get so caught up in trying to minimize their footprint that they forget to maximize it, too.
That is the problem with the footprint analogy. I can’t really think of anything that wants to be stepped on. We think of our footprint as all bad. I think we need a different way of thinking about our impact on the world.
Finally I’ve Made it to my Real Point – Wakes
How about a different metaphor. How about…a wake? Like boats, we can propel ourselves or simply float along. Floating helps us avoid leaving a wake right? Lowers our footprint, right? That’s good, right?
Well, a drifting or anchored boat can still make a little wake as the wind and waves hit it. Drifting boats, like people, can crash. But you are not a boat. You are a living, breathing, eating, consuming, waste-producing person. You are a member of the world and have every right to be here living, breathing, eating (your share, including your share and only your share of meat), consuming (but dial it down, and do it mindfully), waste-producing (this seems like the problem, but really at this point it is too late. Don’t hold it in. Next time, just consume more wisely and within your needs). This means that even drifting you have a footprint.
So it isn’t all about lowering our wake. In life, yes, we should have ‘no wake’ zones like boats have in harbours. It would be good practice for one thing. Libraries, line ups and highways seem like good places to start. We don’t have a lot of opportunity for positive impacts on people in these places. If you really want to have an positive impact on me in these places, leave them. Okay, that seems a bit harsh. Just do your business with calm efficiency, and I’ll try to do the same. That would be great for all of us.
Mind your wake, but make one.
There are so many ways we can impact the world positively. We can make wakes that push others along in a supportive way, in a way that they want. We can ride each other’s wakes to get us where we want to go. Like Sir Isaac Newton said “if I have seen farther, it is from standing on the shoulders of giants.” That’s riding a positive wake. Most of us are not Isaac Newton, but we can still be positive influencers. This website will find the time to think about lowering my wake, but it will also look at increasing it.
There is a world out there to engage in. Personally I think sharing a photo of your supper on Facebook is not meaningfully engaging. Similarly, re-tweeting something pithy someone else re-tweeted from someone who copied it from something else so that your followers who already think like you can see it and re-tweet it back is not meaningfully engaging. That sounds like a drifting boat to me.
Making a wake feels good. It is way better than drifting if we can just put our phones down long enough to pick up our tiller and get ourselves moving through the water with the breeze on our face.
So how do we do that? Beats me. It’s hard. Let’s come back to that another day. Many other days. Everyday, perhaps. But for now, let’s not let that get us down. Let’s think about that wind on our face.
Spread your wings, butterfly. The effects of a butterfly’s wings, after all, are a wake made of air. Mind your wake, but make one.
