What exactly is the butterfly effect?
The Butterfly Effect is not a result of Lorenz. It comes from a science fiction story published in the 1950s. The plot of the story is that there was a hotly contested political election in which a far right candidate was challenging a moderate candidate. The moderate candidate was winning. A time travel device was developed and was used to go back into the time of the dinosaurs. While back there someone stepped on a butterfly and killed it. When they returned to the future, the far right candidate had won the election and they were arrested. The idea is that small events over long enough time accumulate to produce significant events in the future. This may be taken as part of chaos theory but the term predates chaos theory.
