The Butterfly Effect: Do Little Things Cause Big Outcomes?

If a butterfly flaps its wings in the forest, scaring the crap out of an elusive Yeti, who takes off and plows into a tree, knocking it over, does it make a sound? I have no idea, but according to the butterfly effect theory, a seemingly inconsequential action, like a butterfly flapping its wings in one place, can lead to shockingly impactful results in a different place.

Flapping Tornadoes

While the theory has been around for a couple of hundred years in one form or another, or at least the basics of a small action having a much greater effect elsewhere through some convoluted chain of events, it gained more of its modern definition thanks to a mathematician and meteorologist.

His name was Edward Norton Lorenz, and according to the stories, his original theory had more to do with a bird in one place, ultimately causing a tornado somewhere else far away, thanks to the vagaries of weather patterns and lots of interconnected cause and effect. Either a slick Madison Avenue PR agency or a friend suggested he communicate this idea using the butterfly wings analogy to give the story more punch, and here we are.

What’s the Butterfly Effect?

So, how does the Butterfly Effect work? Here’s an example.

A low-flying butterfly flaps its wings, ever so slightly shifting a light breeze just enough to move a discarded lottery ticket into a man’s line of sight. He picks it up and checks the numbers. A win!

With the winnings from that lottery ticket, young and ambitious entrepreneur Johann Verheem has some extra cash to fund his inventive passions.

Seeing a big market opportunity for an awkward and sexually suggestive exercise fad product, Verheem invents and markets the Shake Weight.

The commercials spread virally, leading to satires on Saturday Night Live and South Park, among others.

Verheem’s new company, FitnessIQ, sells some two million Shake Weights.

Customers realize they’ve purchased an utterly ridiculous product and begin to donate the barely-used exercise gimmicks to local thrift stores.

Goodwill donation bins are overwhelmed with discarded devices, and they pile up on the shelves by the hundreds.

Your local Goodwill store closes for reconstruction due to an unexpected collapse of shelving units. Dozens of dollars worth of inventory is destroyed.

While this story paints the picture, I’m not entirely sure it’s true. But there are plenty of very real world events that seemingly transpired based on the tiniest shift in circumstances.

Paintings or World War?

One of the most famous examples of the Butterfly Effect involves the world’s worst sort of villain—Adolph Hitler.

With dreams of a career as an artist, young Hitler produced hundreds of paintings and sketches in his youth, many during his years living in Vienna from 1908 to 1913. In addition to paintings, Hitler created and sold hand-drawn and colored postcards to eke out a living.

In 1907 and again in 1908, Hitler applied to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Both times, his application was rejected. “Rejected” is a polite way of saying, “Oh, hell no!” One American journalist, John Gunther, wrote about Hitler’s paintings, “They are prosaic, utterly devoid of rhythm, color, feeling, or spiritual imagination. They are architect’s sketches: painful and precise draftsmanship; nothing more.” Keep in mind this was in 1936 before Hitler became the world’s most hated man, so the critique had little basis in simply hating Hitler. After one compassionate professor suggested Hitler might succeed as an architect, the young man flatly refused as that would require more schooling. According to the story, he was ticked and became disillusioned, bordering on bitter.

As the story goes, Hitler became cranky during this era, wandering the streets of Vienna, stewing in anger and voicing his opinions that the Jewish people were to blame for the world’s troubles. The rest is history.

But as we all know, art is more than a bit subjective. What if Hitler’s academy application had landed on the admissions desk on a happier day, and one or more on the acceptance committee had considered his work with a more open mind? Perhaps the coffee was lousy that morning. Who knows?

World War II resulted in nearly 100 million overall casualties. Would that unfathomable loss of life been avoided had Hitler been accepted to art school? It sure is hard to imagine a similar rise to power from a starting point of painting street scenes in the classroom. Except for that guy who cut off his own ear, painters seem to be pretty mellow folks.