(July 14, 2014 at 11:22 am)Rhizomorph13 Wrote: From what I've seen, things tend toward the average of forces around them, so I don't believe that small changes can result in huge results. I would point out the effects of a small stone on a lake; at no point has anyone ever dropped a pebble in a lake and suddenly there was a giant wave on the other side of that lake. There are situations where it appears that small change resulted in huge results like when Rosa Parks wouldn't move to the back of the bus. The thing with that particular action was that the prevailing force behind the change that came after was already in place. There was also a sustaining movement that rallied behind the change to push it forward.
Can anyone else come up with an example of small change resulting in larger results?
It just seems to go against the conservation of energy.
I remember reading that scientists ran an experiment injecting water into the San Andreas fault, which seemed to instigate a succession of small earthquakes. I wouldn't regard Ms Parks's action and its fallout as results of chaos theory insofar as the events unfolded among willing agents, rather than mindless interactions.
It's my understanding that systems which have a multiplicity of variables will find points of stability wherein all those variables will act in a predictable manner, but that if one of those variables sees significant change, there stands a good chance that the other variables will react in ways that can further disrupt the equilibrium.
An example that springs to mind immediately is global warming: the warmer the globe, the more ice is melted at the poles. That reduces the Earth's albedo, meaning that the ocean will directly absorb more sunlight and turn it into heat, as well as evaporating more water, which will raise the average temperature even more, which will reduce the albedo ... you get the picture: a runaway effect can occur to a stable system given a large-enough variance. Obviously, there can be factors which inhibit such cycles (and in the example, there seem to be); but I'm using this to illustrate my point, not argue a factual position.
