Maybe. Or maybe one dead mouse is just noise. It doesn't follow that any minor event can have enormous consequences. It's possible that big events are over-determined. The butterfly effect is misunderstood. It wasn't coined to illustrate how small effects can have large consequences, but that highly dynamic systems can be so sensitive to…
Maybe. Or maybe one dead mouse is just noise. It doesn't follow that any minor event can have enormous consequences. It's possible that big events are over-determined. The butterfly effect is misunderstood. It wasn't coined to illustrate how small effects can have large consequences, but that highly dynamic systems can be so sensitive to initial conditions that we can't know if they had an effect nor track the changes. Hurricanes are caused by large interactions between water and air currents. One butterfly won't make a difference. Similarly, there are broad social/economic/political trends that bring about historical events regardless of the actions of individuals (or mice!). We usually say that WW1 was initiated by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, but Europe had been on the brink for years. It’s impossible to say what would have happen otherwise, but there probably still would have been a war.
There's also something funny about the idea that you may not have come to exist because of some random sperm event (or sliding door or whatever.) It's true that you, specifically, would not be here, but someone else might be, here or on another blog making similar observations.
I've never been able to properly express what I feel is the misstep here, but it has something to do with the idea that you trying to compare existence to non-existence. But non-existence is not a property that you can or can't have - it's not a property at all. You didn't wonder about your existence before you were born, and you won't wonder about it after you are dead (unless: afterlife).
Maybe. Or maybe one dead mouse is just noise. It doesn't follow that any minor event can have enormous consequences. It's possible that big events are over-determined. The butterfly effect is misunderstood. It wasn't coined to illustrate how small effects can have large consequences, but that highly dynamic systems can be so sensitive to initial conditions that we can't know if they had an effect nor track the changes. Hurricanes are caused by large interactions between water and air currents. One butterfly won't make a difference. Similarly, there are broad social/economic/political trends that bring about historical events regardless of the actions of individuals (or mice!). We usually say that WW1 was initiated by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, but Europe had been on the brink for years. It’s impossible to say what would have happen otherwise, but there probably still would have been a war.
There's also something funny about the idea that you may not have come to exist because of some random sperm event (or sliding door or whatever.) It's true that you, specifically, would not be here, but someone else might be, here or on another blog making similar observations.
I've never been able to properly express what I feel is the misstep here, but it has something to do with the idea that you trying to compare existence to non-existence. But non-existence is not a property that you can or can't have - it's not a property at all. You didn't wonder about your existence before you were born, and you won't wonder about it after you are dead (unless: afterlife).
Maybe