HELP! what is the meaning of “the butterfly effect”?
The butterfly effect is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; namely that small differences in the initial condition of a dynamic system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. A ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position. The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with “what if” scenarios where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes.
