One of the popular things to discuss today is chaos as from chaos theory. Most explanations of it are not good enough to get across what it really is. I am now going to attempt to avoid being one of those failures.
At the highest level of processes there are deterministic and random. A deterministic process is simply one where the rules are known and to get back to where you started you only have to know the do them in reverse order. It is like flying from one coast to the other and using your return ticket to get back.
A random process, also call non-deterministic by those interested in more precise wording, is one where there is no rule to start with. In these cases the rules are created at each step of the process. For example taking a walk in an open field and every three steps a coin is flipped to decide whether to turn right or left.
Of this kind of process there are two kinds. The first kind is where the coin is guaranteed to result in reverse order as you return. This is very much like dropping bread crumbs and following them to find you way back. The other kind is where there is no way to leave bread crumbs to find your way back by chance you could find your way back to the starting point, unlikely but conceivable.
We are still not at chaos.
Consider a process whereby right or left is chosen by the exact sequence of the previous three coin tosses. The chances of getting back to the starting point are very much lower. Certainly if we introduce the requirement to get there in the same number of steps and coin flipping points it begins to appear impossible.
We are still at not chaos.
To make the next step appear a bit more reasonable I am going to have to expand the simply choosing right and left to a turn based upon the compass. The turn can be any of 360 degrees.
The next step is that every decision upon which degree of turning is based upon every prior decision. In this case it is obvious there it no way to get back to the starting point as the first decision is part of the determination of how to get there but it is only one of any number. This is sort of the technical way of saying, you can never go home again.
We are still not at chaos.
Rather than simply 360 degrees, as each is a discrete number -- an integer -- we introduce real numbers 3.14159... degrees as a possible turn. That means there are an infinite number of possible degrees of turning at each decision point. And as each prior point is a factor it must be a "weighted" factor such that turn number 3,445,981 is worth a factor of .932 but turn number 14 is worth only .0432 in value. Each turn having a different weight.
As all of the different weights and turns and decisions are infinitely variable it is clear we can never get back where we started.
Now we are almost at chaos.
Given this complexity we come to a turn before we make the flip for that turn we have to predict what that turn will be. We can not as we do not know the result. As we can not know even the next turn consider know two, five or fifty turns ahead being equally impossible.
Thus we can know all there is to know about the past and not know one specific thing about the future.
This is chaos.
Apply this to personal life. A college education decades ago was likely a major influence as might have been a good or bad marriage but taking the long or short route to work may have determined meeting the person to make that good or bad marriage. And at that meeting of the right or wrong marriage partner what was the coin toss? That other person's entire life that brought them to that place and time.
The results of that place and time are based upon both personal event sequences going back through all time that lead to those persons and every detail of the meeting and the events at that meeting. And even if some wag claims to have predicted a good or bad marriage from that meeting who is going to say the filing for divorce occurred five years, three months and six days into the marriage with one child that contributed to the bad marriage because of it unpredictable birth defect?
This is chaos. It is the ability to know everything about something and not be able to predict the future. And the catch in the above example is the birth defect of the child. That would require a complete knowledge of the sperm and egg and the time of copulations and fertilization of something that was still in the future. Even if all of that could be predicted a defective sperm or egg ultimately comes down to effects on the quantum level which are not predictable be definition.
Thus the known unpredictable quantum world interacts with the world we feel is reasonably predictable even though it is chaotic.
It is the function of the nervous system to make this chaos appear predictable and deterministic. It is a function of the human mind to make enough sense of this to make a best guess about the future upon which to plan for the future. But we clearly know what we perceive is not what is happening out there and even more clearly we should realize what we perceive insider ourselves should not make any greater sense.
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