Roads Not Taken

Almost every day I drive on hilly winding narrow Roxiticus Road. Though the road is an old one that appears on mid-18^th century maps, it never developed into anything that can be called a thoroughfare. It retains all its original blind curves, both vertical and horizontal, and so demands a modicum of caution when driving on it. Yesterday I found myself behind a bicyclist just before three successive blind curves. Much to the annoyance of the driver of the Mercedes on my tail I didn’t pass even when the cyclist slowed to a crawl going up a hill. It was the right decision since, sure enough, a car whizzed around the curve the other direction at a high speed. A pass would have been fatal. A simple choice such as whether or not to pass a bike can make all the difference in life. Giving in to impatience in such a circumstance is obviously wrong, but many simple choices are not so obvious, and they make all the difference, too.

Roxiticus Road (pre-summer).
Blind curve just past bridge.

The butterfly effect is a cliché but no less true for being one. The originator of the term was MIT meteorology professor Edward Lorenz. In 1961 he was testing early computer simulations of weather patterns. He repeated one simulation but rounded off a variable from 0.506127 to 0.506. The miniscule change radically altered the outcome. He came up with the butterfly example to illustrate the limits of modeling: small uncounted (and uncountable) variables such as the flapping of butterfly wings can have consequences all out of proportion to their size. I suspect, but don’t know, that Lorenz was a Bradbury fan. In 1952 Ray Bradbury published the story A Sound of Thunder in which a time traveler drastically alters the future by stepping on a butterfly in prehistory. This may have influenced Lorenz’ choice of examples, which just as easily could have been called the starling effect or some such thing.
 
Most of the major events in my life (and probably yours) ultimately derived from small random occurrences and tiny offhand decisions that compounded over time. I attended George Washington University, for example, and my life surely would be profoundly different had I spent those four years not in DC but in some other college in some other place – if indeed I even would have finished four years in some other place. Yet, GWU wasn’t on my radar at all when I first began sending out applications my senior year of high school. I just happened to overhear a fellow senior, who had researched schools more diligently than I, praising the university to another student. I already had picked four possibles and wanted a fifth for backup, so on the basis of a recommendation that wasn’t even aimed at me I added it to my list as well. Had I been a couple steps further away or a little less attentive to the conversations around me life would have been... well... otherwise.
 
Many other small moments proved as or more consequential. I very nearly didn’t speak to the young lady who became my first serious love interest: it was very much a coin toss and I certainly didn’t expect much to come of it either way. So, too, with my last love interest. (I’m pretty sure I’m done with that particular brand of insanity – and, whether of a good or bad kind, insanity it is.) Then there are the times I didn’t speak but almost did. My jobs, investments, car choices, home choices, and a myriad other things all give an outward appearance of having been planned but, while planning gave them some kind of after-the-fact order and coherence, all of them in some sense blew my way from the flapping of butterfly wings. (Dwight Eisenhower had something like this in mind when he said, “Plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”)
 
In the moments before sleep I often think how dissimilar things would be had I made this or that close call decision the other way. In truth there is no way to tell since countless other butterflies would have influenced the alternate outcome. I think about it anyway. If the multiverse interpretation is correct, somewhere out there are worlds where I (and you) did make other choices. If the determinists are correct on the other hand, everything that ever was and ever will be is already built into the structure of the universe; past, present, and future coexist, despite our limited perception, and choice is an illusion. I have no insight into which (if either) is correct. I do have a preference. There was a time when I found determinism (and with it the notion that the past with all its occupants physically continues to exist elsewhen) more comforting. Nowadays, though, I’m happy to live in an uncertain and ephemeral world of maybes. Reality is not subject to my preference or yours, of course, but until proven wrong that’s the interpretation I’ll go with. I’m curious to learn what minor and seemingly mindless decision today (posting this blog perhaps) leads to some unexpected big consequence down the road. Maybe nothing that happens today will affect the outcome of anything much. But maybe it will.

Janis Joplin – Maybe