Have you ever witnessed the Butterfly Effect?
It is easy to feel helpless at times. As if there is nothing you can do to impact the "greater good." Many of us currently feel rather helpless in relation to politics, but there are many other reasons for this as well.
One argument I hold against this helplessness is the Butterfly Effect, which (in this context) proposes that even the smallest action can significantly alter the future.
An example could be giving encouragement to someone about to give up on a task (even if you aren't aware of it), which keeps them on a trajectory they would have otherwise never continued.
Have you been fortunate enough to identify when this has happened around you?
Of course, there could be negative outcomes related to this too, but I hope we can identify some positive ones.
(Meta note: I was debating if this should be under ~talk or ~life and went with ~life, but feel free to move it if you disagree.)
I feel that as a teacher I've seen this a lot - especially when I see students years later. It's helpful to keep in mind that small actions or moments for us can be huge for others. It's why I strive to be kind, caring, and thoughtful in my interactions with others, because even a small compliment or a kind word can have a huge effect.
It was a teacher for me! My high school maths teacher brought a bunch of board games on a school trip, and during one of them told me that I seem like the kind of person who would like a game called Diplomacy. I was interested so she set up a board game evening after school and brought the game (which everyone except me ended up hating but which I immediately fell in love with).
I started playing online very shortly after that, and went to some in-person tournaments too. Cut to fifteen years later - I've met most of my friends through Diplomacy, I met my fiancé through one of those Diplomacy friends, my bachelors dissertation was on Diplomacy, and I worked at Facebook on Diplomacy AI for a year. And I eventually started making videos about it which has sort of half-become my job now.
It's insane to think how different my life would have been if that teacher hadn't shared their niche interest with me.
Great story, thanks for sharing! I'm fascinated by the razor edge our life swings on at times. Small decisions can push us into very different paths.
I think there are a lot of small moments like this all the time that have dramatic impacts on our lives. Like you choose a seat in the cafeteria in 2nd grade and end up making a new friend who becomes your best friend for life. You decide to go to a party one day in college which is where you end up meeting the person who becomes your spouse. You bump into an old friend out in public, start talking, and end up leaving your job to go work at their company. You decide to go to a water-park one day, then slip and break your ankle on your way there which requires two surgeries and months of rehab. Simple decisions/actions that create major ripples in your life.
For my own example: this past December/January, my wife and I took an international trip to visit my family. Was intended to be just a simple 2-3 week vacation to de-stress and see my family that I haven't been able to visit in almost a decade. Well she loved it there. The cost of living, the proximity to family, the feel of the city, the food, everything. Now we are making plans to move there hopefully sometime in the next year or so (working on selling our house and getting visas and stuff). One measly vacation has potentially drastically altered the trajectory of our lives, which we didn't expect in the slightest when we embarked on the plane ride there.
I agree that there are a good number of smaller moments like that which aren't necessarily obvious unless you examine them in retrospect.
My instance is something along those lines and it's still a "what if..." I ponder from time to time. While in college I agreed to assist one friend who was volunteering at a local high school one Friday evening — a one-off thing and I had some other connections to the school, so I figured it would be nice to help. As a result I had to turn down another friend's later invitation to go on a trip with them that same weekend. I now believe that weekend would have been the catalyst for dating and likely eventually marrying either of them as that is exactly what happened with the one I stayed with; at the time I had been flirting with both of them and considering long-term relationships so I see it as a diverging path with that decision determining a large part of my life to follow.
Wow that is indeed a big what-if!
Yeah for every one of these small actions that drastically changes the course of one's life, there's an equal and opposite what-if for if you hadn't done that thing. If you didn't go on that trip, or talk to that person, or sit in that seat, or slip on that sidewalk. Our lives are just a series of forks in the road, branching off into seemingly infinite possibilities. Basically the butterfly effect in reverse.
Vis-a-vis the water park, I'm feeling something related right now.
New Years Eve 2024, my friend and I decided to go to a metal gig. I was running a little late on the day itself, can't remember why. So instead of wearing boots like I normally do (for protection AND fashion), I wore some crummy old sports shoe.
Well I was in the pit as you normally might be in a metal gig, and somehow my foot got twisted really bad. And then right after that I got caught in a human pileup, with about 3-4 people on top of me (felt some weight on my foot too).
My foot still hasn't healed completely yet. I can't go for a jog, which sucks. I'm confident my boots would have protected me. If only I took that 2-3 minutes.
Damn, sorry to hear that. Hope it recovers well soon! The older I get the more things seem to take to heal. 10-20 years I'm sure you would have been jogging by January 2nd, lol.
I'm very curious. Do you mind sharing which country/region you took the trip to? I'm always interested in knowing where there's great food and feels.
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil! And we're currently in the states in case that wasn't super clear.
There's definitely pros and cons of moving there. But for our very specific situation it seems to make a lot of sense and the pros would vastly outweigh the cons when compared to other places that we were considering (we were already planning on moving cities, just didn't consider Rio until our trip there). My wife had previously never left the country, so I was worried she would have a hard time, but the exact opposite happened and she loved it!
And in my totally-not-biased opinion, the food there is next to none! Especially the street foods and the desserts! Let me know if you ever want any Brazilian food recommendations and I could talk your ears off.
Haha, that's great! Thanks for the update, and I'm glad that you're both excited by it!
I wish we had a stronger street food culture here in the West. I don't know how they do it, but somehow just cooking or eating outside seems to unlock flavours that I never thought possible.
The US does have a lot of food trucks though, but they've gotten so expensive nowadays that I find it harder to enjoy the food there knowing I'm paying sit-down restaurant prices. Truth be told I don't think much or any of the food we purchased was actually cooked outside. But lots of places you might visit, like say the beach, have little kiosks where you can order food and then eat on the go. Street-adjacent if you will, lol.
The butterfly's flap was a single question. My friend and I were driving around, and as a sort of off-the-cuff remark, I asked if he'd be interested in joining me at an anime convention. Honestly, I was almost too embarrassed to ask, as I seriously doubted he'd be interested in something so geeky. But I figured it was worth asking if not just to generate some conversation. To my surprise, my friend said yes.
The convention was out of state for him. It also coincided with the birthday of my partner's sister, which meant that I'd have to leave the convention for a bit to drop my partner off, during which time my friend would have to fend for himself. In the half hour I was gone, a woman asked if the seat next to him was free -- a single seat, in an auditorium filled with thousands. She was a regular to the convention but lived on the other end of the state. Still, she knew the best late-night hangs, so they exchanged numbers and agreed to meet up later.
My dudes, they spent that whole night pecking and grinding on each other while her friend and I awkwardly made small talk in a bar too noisy for conversation. Suffice it to say, they hit it off hard. Soon they started dating, my friend moved to her state, they got married, and now they have a child together.
This got me thinking and it turned into this very long blog post / old man ramble on an event that has had a profound effect on my life.
In which aphoenix talks at length about his relationship with making music
When I was 9, my dad went to an auction with his uncle1 and bought, seemingly on a whim 🦋, an antique piano. I would like to reflect on how this has changed the course of, if not the world, at least my life and many people around me.
I was a fat little kid that didn't have a lot of friends, and I was socially awkward and unsure of myself. I wasn't gifted at sport and while I was good at school, I had not found whatever my "thing" was. When dad brought home the piano, my mother decided that it was not very useful to have a piano if nobody could play. We got a few recommendations for piano teachers and ended up choosing 🦋 to take lessons with Mrs. Rogers.
Mrs. Rogers was a wonderful woman, kind, bubbly, full of joy, and a great teacher. Within a lesson or two, she decided to choose 🦋 a particular teaching method with me, and a different one with my sister. She had a knack of making teaching fun, and never used any kind of negative feedback, relying only on the joy that she clearly took when we succeed at what she was teaching us to instill in us a love of making music. At the end of each school year, she would encourage all of her students to play in a recital. It was not required, but I decided to do so 🦋 and I found that I quite enjoyed performing in front of people.
Time, obviously, continued, and I grew and entered high school, and I signed up for music classes 🦋 mostly because I thought it would be easy credits. I showed up and picked an instrument to learn, the Baritone / Euphonium, which I again chose mostly on a whim 🦋. Our high school music teacher was Mr. Zinck, who encouraged me to join the high school band, which I did 🦋. Later in high school, he also encouraged me to join the choir; I was no singer, but I figured, "why not?" 🦋 and joined up.
I bought a guitar - it was a long planned event that I saved up for, and I started by buying a crappy El Degas bass 🦋that was a pretty bad call, but I ended up loving playing bass. I shortly after also bought a pretty great acoustic guitar, though I honestly only chose that particular brand because it was a cool red colour 🦋. I did not know how to play guitar at all, but Mrs. Rogers and Mr. Zinck had given me the most important tools, which was an understanding of music, and I taught myself how to play.
I met my first girlfriend via the music programme. She played sax and sang in the choir. We dated for some months and broke up. My second girlfriend was also very into music at school, and we started performing together in coffee shops; she introduced me to a bunch of different musical artists2 that I still treasure and play to this day 🦋.
Our high school was in Fergus, a very Scottish little town, and we wore kilts and looked very sharp, and when I was in Grade 13, we took a band trip to Scotland. It was a wonderful trip filled with a lot of music, but I was also 18 and deeply stupid, and it was filled with so much beer. One night I had what would turn out to be one of the craziest nights of my life, which involved getting thrown out of the same bar multiple times 🦋, accidentally stealing from a bakery 🦋, witnessing a friend getting absolutely bludgeoned with a hard loaf of bread 🦋, gifting my underwear to an older scottish lady who had run her hand up my kilt to figure out if I was wearing any 🦋, and in a variety of ways losing the respect of various classmates and souring friendships and tanking my relationship with the girl I was dating 🦋. However, the biggest thing to come from this crazy night happened after the first time I got thrown out of a bar for causing a ruckus. I was standing outside considering my options and I saw a girl sitting on the nearby bridge, dangling her legs out over the river and crying. I walked over and spoke to her for 15 minutes. Over the course of the conversation she told me that she had been considering jumping, and by the end of our conversation she decided not to, because someone took an interest 🦋.
I do not know what ever became of her, but I think I was in the right place at the right time, all because of music 🦋.
Moving on, I went to university and met a bunch of people, often via music. A friend was in a musical and needed someone to play piano, so I signed up. During the course of that musical3, I bought a bass guitar from one of the other band members, just because it was a good deal and because I had won a small amount of money from a lottery ticket 🦋. Shortly after that, a friend of mine introduced me to a guy who wanted to start a band, and since I hadjust bought a bass, I elected to play bass for them. I was in the band for 7 years, and met one of my best and closest friends as a result 🦋, and made a whole bunch of pretty great music4.
When I was about 25 or so, a couple of friends I had were leaving Guelph to move to Toronto and I attended a housewarming party for the couple in the new place. I was coming from an open mic and had my acoustic guitar with me 🦋, which I absolutely could not leave in my crap car. Over the course of the party several of us were coerced into singing and playing guitar for the group 🦋. There was a beautiful woman there that I was interested in, but while we chatted for quite a while at the party, at no point did I work up the nerve to ask for her number. I went home, opened my guitar case to play, and found a lovely hand written letter from the beautiful woman, talking about how connected people were and how random events can bring people together 🦋.
We have been together for 20 years.
1 - Uncle Roy was a wonderful man. My bonus grandfather, he was married to my dad's mother's sister, Aunt Ruby who was,as you may guess, my bonus grandmother. Uncle Roy was a phenomenal woodworker and tinker, and he instilled in my father a love of working with his hands, and the ability to solve problems. I feel like that is something that my own father also passed no to me, albeit in a bit of a different way, as I am not half the Carpenter my father is, but am a million times the programmer that he is. Tradeoffs
2 - most notably Jewel and Ani DiFranco. I still play "You Were Meant For Me" by Jewel and "Both Hands" by Ani pretty frequently
3 - A Chorus Line was the musical, and as a fun fact, my wife remembers going to see it, and the musical I was the conductor for the following year, "Crazy For You"
4 - Lucky Number Ten is the band we were in. Remnants remain online of us playing together; some videos and an mp3 here or there.
Wow, I did not see that ending coming. It's pretty incredible how these kinds of "on a whim" choices result in who we are today.
This is so much more satisfying than how I met your mother. Good job uncle Roy! Do you still play the euphonium? I've secretly admired that instrument since band but always felt inadequate to try .....
I can still play, though I don't own one. Luckily my middle daughter is now playing in her middle school band, so I have reacquainted myself and helped teach her how to play. I thought I would have a significantly worse embouchure after so many years not playing frequently, but I guess it's like riding a bike. I've been trawling used adds for a while thinking about making a purchase, but haven't found one that I'm excited about that's a reasonable price. I think patience is the key.
If you have played any other brass instruments, it's relatively similar! If you can play a scale on a trumpet, and are willing to go loose lipped, you can play one on the euphonium; if you ever get a chance to try it out, I certainly recommend it!
I've definitely had the "random one off thing I do effects people a lot" happen. The one that jumps to mind is introducing a guy to Magic the gathering, now it's his main hobby and where his entire friend group and social life surrounds it.
How about yourself?
In Tech, I've seen the Butterfly Effect in the form of (1) decisions made several weeks/months/years ago having unintended consequences in the present and (2) a change in system X causes system Y, indirectly dependent on system X via a succession of multiple indirect relationships, break for no obvious reason. A system designed to perform under X constraints suddenly finds itself failing miserably because a new behavioral pattern occurs that was unanticipated at implementation time.
Schwartzkopf (sp?) paraphrased Helmut von Multke the Lesser when he said, "No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy." In this case, I'd add the corollary that "No executed plan survives the passage of time" and "No plan survives a black swan event."
"well yeah you'd probably want null to be a value"
BILLIONS OF FRUSTRATED DEBUGGING HOURS LATER!
That's its own fun thing whenever anyone who isn't familiar with Null Object touches the code. 😬
Makes sense
Makes sense
I see you fell into a common trap. You see, in fact, JavaScript has never made sense. 😝
There is in fact one easy way to know what javascript will do before running it.
You figure out what a normal language would do. Javascript will do the opposite
The section of my sophomore Intro to Circuits I chose at random ended up shaping my whole life. Because I met the grad student teaching the class, I later became her grader, which led to me finding out about an internship at her dad's company, where he was my mentor. Since he went to CMU for grad school, I decided to apply there. (I had never heard of it, and didn't know that it was rated among the best CS/ECE schools in the country.) I got accepted, and more important, funded for the PhD prgram, causing me to come to Pittsburgh. There I met my advisor, who shaped my career through grad school and my past two jobs, and my wife, who has shaped everything else.
If I had gone to another section of that class, I'd probably be living in Texas working on oil field control software.
Watching youtube at work led to my interest in astronomy
Dropped phone and broke screen. Upgraded to Galaxy S24 Ultra. The camera on this thing is bonkers, I wonder what Jupiter looks like through it? It's a blurry mess, but you can see the Gallilean moons! Imagine holding this up to a telescope! Hey dad, do you still have that old telescope in storage?
Of course, a cell phone is not very good for astrophotography, and a 4.5 inch dobsonian telescope is even worse. A Canon EOS 300D and the cheapest equatorial mount from Celestron isn't much better. I know astronomy is where my heart is, because I've gone through multiple "hobby killers" and I still want more
You should check out the Hadley 3d printable telescope. You can easily make or find additional parts, mods, and add-ons for various cameras.
I've printed two for a friend (he had a mount already), as well as a refracting telescope based on the same design.
!!! Bookmarked !!!
You wouldn't also happen to know how I can get a cheap rock tumbler do you?
I've pondered this a lot actually, especially about my own life choices (often the negative ones) and wondered what life would be like without it.
Some positive examples:
You may know about or even have participated in /r/place, an event hosted by Reddit where any user could place a colored tile from a limited palette on a large canvas, at a rate of one pixel per 5 minutes per user account for a limited time before the canvas eventually freezes. This event occurred three times, in 2017, 2022 and 2023. An individual user (...unless making use of a bunch of bot accounts, which definitely happened too especially in 2023, but for the sake of not getting myself lost in details I won't cover that) can't do much on their own, but an organized group could manage to have a meaningful effect of the canvas, as hinted by the event's tagline:
This naturally drove people to gather in groups ...and with Reddit not exactly being well equipped for real time coordination, most of that funnily enough happened on Discord servers (with Twitch and Youtube livestreams also being a common way to coordinate starting from 2022), while Reddit itself served at most as a redirection point to the various coordination centers. While the canvas was large, at the scale of Reddit's userbase it was small enough to get filled up pretty quickly (in fact, the 2022 and 2023 iterations both had the canvas expanding over the course of the event as a gimmick). As factions emerged on the increasingly crowded canvas, some unique to the event and others being representatives of existing communities and groups, this had the kind of consequences you'd probably expect.
With the knowledge that the event would eventually end and conflict arising over what gets to stay on the canvas (and more importantly what will not), this suddenly wasn't just about messing around with pixel art anymore, it was about protecting what you've made. Now, obviously, events taking place within a glorified online mspaint are not exactly of critical importance to the world at large, but this was something that a lot of people participated in, and I do think it works well as an example of individuals being capable of affecting things on a large scale.
Most people stumbling upon the canvas probably just took a casual look and placed a handful of pixels to help maintain artwork they liked, other more invested users looked more closely into what the groups they were in were doing on the canvas and headed to the coordination servers to help out... And of course, there were the people who took up the task of organizing these coordination servers and getting in contact with other groups who did the same, and for those people the event became less of a virtual graffiti wall and more of a pretend geopolitics game (with some shades of actual geopolitics because as everyone who heard of /r/place knows, groups representing their countries popped up all over the place to the dismay of many, but I'm getting off track here).
The thing is that while by numbers the amount of organized users in these coordination centers were far, far lower than the total amount of users interacting with the canvas, this much larger group of less organized people are much more likely to engage with something they can recognize, such as helping complete an artwork in progress or spread a pattern like a country flag or a grid of some sort, than to create one of their own. Part of the game was therefore to manage to establish enough of your desired artwork that the broader userbase would recognize, and hopefully contribute to it. Properly leveraging this effect (often jokingly referred to within the coordination centers as "the hivemind") allowed groups to punch well above their weight compared to what they could achieve on their own. Even within the coordination servers, plenty of people were content with simply following the instructions of whoever decided to take charge so long as their plans didn't wildly differ from the overall group's intent.
A common practice among the organized groups was to set up pixel art templates that could be distributed to the whole group in the form of a browser userscript that highlighted desired colors on specific positions of the canvas, allowing people to contribute to the exact same artwork much more reliably and enabled much more effective defense against groups trying to wipe it out (or simply natural decay from people placing random pixels). So long as someone could provide pixel art for it, one could potentially secure a desired artwork on the canvas simply by convincing an established group to add it to their template, and many alliance networks were formed on that basis. If you took part in the diplomacy layer of this event, you could potentially single-handedly influence the canvas in ways one wouldn't expect someone to be able to in an event where millions took part.
And, speaking from experience, the barrier for entry wasn't high. While many well known content creators obviously took advantage of their existing reputation and audience of dozens of thousands (if not more) to massively impact the canvas for better or for worse, I, despite being otherwise pretty much a nobody as far as the Internet in general is concerned, can point to many artworks particularly over the 2022 and 2023 iterations of the canvas that I was personally involved in getting established, and even led a faction of my own. Many other people have similar stories of getting to influence the overall canvas from participating in the event, and I think that's neat, even if in this case the only lasting effect is as part of a PNG file.
I'm a firm believer in this effect, and while I can't think of anything where I've been happily butterflied this post reminded me of my decision to try and be the butterfly for all young people I see in public.
I try to reciprocate eye contact, give them all a geniune smile and play together however we can in whatever brief moment we have.
I think it can give them enough hope, if they need it, to keep looking for good people despite their current situation.