I've heard about, like if everyone was to stop for 10 seconds or something, the future would be changed. Can someone explain what it's about?

I cant give you a complete answer but basically, my understanding anyway, of the chaos theory is that

'Things' tend to moved toward disorder

Here is a page that has a really good explanation (not my page, I just found it via Google search)

http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html

Thanks for the site Kentuckyslone

In a nutshell, any given situation contains so many effective variables that it is impossible to predict an outcome. Chaos applies to everything. Lorenz was primarily interested in weather prediction, but since the advent of the theory, it has been applied everywhere.
Aside from this, the theory is one of the main reasons that every individual should keep an open mind about everything from physics to medicine to psychology to archaeology. We really don't have access to all the factors, whether it be physical laws or theory about ancient civilizations or UFOs.
The theory is the advent of "If a butterfly in China changes direction of flight, it will affect the weather in the US."
Have fun.

Wow that's an interesting theory. So it's like things are constantly changing?

It's a way of predicting complex systems without going into the actual mechanics of the system.
Sounds impossible, but chaos mathematicians claim to have found "hidden" patterns in complex systems , no matter
what the system is. Laws by which , brain impulses, movement of dust, economy, and any other complex system moves.
As if universe has hidden formulas that apply to everything.

imagine a complex traffic system, like a huge mess of cars.
Normal mathematics would try to calculate each cars physics, movement etc. and integrate it to get
the whole picture and predict the entire system.
Chaos theory would ignore individual cars, and look at the system as a whole and try and predict it
without even considering physics of the car.

It is pretty amazing and to some hard to imagine, but there is something about it.

but mind that this description is a gross simplification, and it makes it sound like magic, but
that's about it in a one-post-space

This stuff interests me so much!

but one thing Id like to know is how accepted it is or how valid it is.

wow... Very interesting theory...

The validity of the theory should be obvious. Sorry if this sounds a little over the top, perhaps, but one must look at chaos in the sense that each consequence (resultant activity) is the result of an almost infinite number of contributory factors.

One here said it's a way of predicting complex systems without going into the actual mechanics of the system. (Northwest) This has been touted as being a truth; however, that is mathematical imprecision. There are numerous math sets that claim to be predictive, such as the Mandelbrot equations. However, it must be remembered that the patterns are merely supposition, as are most of the laws we see as laws. While many are accepted, and have been validated in general terms, there are few, if any, of these laws that are absolute.

In my part of the game, electronics, any and all laws are, to a good engineer, generally acceptable; however, any and all laws have factors which appear, apparently from nowhere, that must be accounted for in any system, be it simple or complex. Naturally, the more complex the system, the greater the number of such factors. As a for instance, when dealing with high power systems in which either or both voltage and current are large, field generation and subsequent affected circuitry can be quite nasty, wherein noise currents might be well over the input currents, as well as extreme voltage generation. In most cases, the resultant noise is damped in one fashion or another, without much thought of what caused it in the first place.

Numerous inconsistencies exist within the field of electrical phenomena, perhaps more in the areas of high power and magnetics. On UM, I've been told we know all about these phenomena, but when I've asked why certain things happen, there are no answers, just quotations of some of the "laws" previously mentioned. For myself, that is incomplete; until then, the phenomena, whatever it might be, remains to some degree mystical in the sense that we cannot truly define, therefore predict, what will occur. We may have a good idea that something will happen, and prepare for that in some way, but usually modifications are in order.

Even within particle physics there are double standards, in a sense. In some ways, normal mathematics can be predictive, but in others, the requirement is to use matrix math. For those unfamiliar, simplistically, normal math as A * B = B * A (no, not the musical group). In matrix solutions, it is not necessarily so that the above is correct; it may be said that A * B /= B * A (not equal to), because of the matrix itself. Yet, the two forms are used, sometimes interchangeably, to make the math predictive.

In a very real sense, it is possible for simple thought about an object to change that object in some fashion, oddly enough. This aspect was forwarded by several physicists who desire to remain unnamed (for purposes of reputation), and continues to be a point of contention.

Where does this lead? Back to the chaos theory, wherein it is virtually impossible to know all the factors of an outcome.
Again, have fun.

Love this theory! Proves that we can't control everything in the world!

Here is another link in more or less layman's terms Clicky

I also find it amazing that scientists who love to be so accurate acknowledge this theory...

what if the future has alredy ajusted to the people stoppin an "x" amount of times before people attempt it making it completly useless, you cannot change what hasnt already happened, something is going to happen either way and how would you know if you made a diference, what the difference between everyone in the world stopping or just 5 there is no difference. the only thing that doesnt make sense is how do certain individuals predict the future?

Basically, it can be summed up as:

Very small changes to the starting position can result in huge changes to the overall system.

Lorenz discovered this when building a weather simulator on a computer. It took ages to run, and he had limited computer time, so he printed out all the numbers he needed to start it again from the same position. One day, when returning to a former position, when he re-ran it using the printed numbers, he got a wildly different result to the first time it had run.

It took him a little while, but he realised that it was because his print out had rounded the figures to the nearest three decimal points, whereas the computer system had previously run to 11 or so. He was shocked, because these tiny differences made such a huge impact on the overall weather system he was modelling.

It's from this that the phrase "A butterfly flaps it's wings and a hurricane strikes miles away" originated.

What it means to us on a day to day basis, is that some systems are extremely difficult to accurately predict because of the accuracy of measurement that is required in order to build an exact model. These systems are called "Chaotic".

Hmm, I think it is important to note, so no one is to be mislead, that not all complex systems are chaotic.

Lets point out the defining aspects of a chaotic system.

1. Topologically transitive: Localized points can be "flung out" into large sets so that clumped localization is lost.
2. Sensitivity to initial conditions: This has been well explained with the butterfly effect on this thread (also a condition of all complex systems)
3. A dense collection of points having periodic orbits.

Its also easy to assume, by many descriptions, chaos implies randomness. It is not, it is deterministic evolution of the system. This is what allows for there to be predictive power. Were the system truly random, no prediction would be possible.

This is true of all complex systems and partly defines the usefulness of formulation for a given system. A totally random system, Where a set of events follow no structure, is useless.

Other than that it has been covered very nicely by tiggs and rabid.

One should also remember that any naturally occurring phenomena cannot be accurately predicted via the initial conditions. For example, if a tornado forms, not only do the initial conditions affect the formation or non-formation, so do all conditions leading up to the tornado. So, in a sense, if the scientific analysis of a system accounts only for those initial conditions, the subsequent additions are ignored.

In short, it is my contention that to fully analyze a specific event, all conditions leading to the event must be included. Since we cannot realistically know all factors involved, we can make approximations only; this has been well supported over the years in my empirical observations in electronics. We can (electronically) assume the circumstances, and be quite accurate doing so, but almost always there will enter some unknown and unpredicted effect. Sometimes we ignore the effect, as it doesn't really matter, other times it must be fixed. Regardless how thorough the engineer has been, this was unforeseen.

An interesting sideline here is that in electronics the power systems involving "non-linear" circuitry (should be called "natural", since nature is non-linear) are most susceptible to these unforeseen phenomena. These systems deal more often than not such things as L, LC and RLC circuits and the associated drives. Most engineers conveniently ignore the fact that fields around a current flow act differently than fields near a current flow, and this single item can cause some real problems. It might also eventually become a key to new and different energy sources.

So its like saying that there shouldn't have to be chaos if we could analyze everything down to subatomic levels. But that is unfeasable for humans. Makes me wonder if it isn't order for someone else...

Chaos theory is the study of systems that iterate through multiple generations, sending their output as input into the next iteration. One good example is the stock market - a person sells a stock, causing something to happen in the market, which in turn influences the actions of that person in regards to other stocks.

There are two very interesting things in this - one is that very small changes at the beginning can, over time, develop into very big differences over the course of multiple iterations (AKA "The Butterfly Effect").

The other thing is that even within a system that never exactly repeats itself, there are bits of stability. The Great red spot on Jupiter is a great example - It never exactly repeats itself, since it's edges are always in flux. But the overall system actually remains quite consistent....

Actually, Ozzie Osbourne is an excellent example of chaos.

So, in essence, Douglas Adams (of the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy fame) used this theory in one of his books.

I think, from memory, that a single piece of sponge cake was attached to a machine in which a human could sit. The machine, from the piece of cake attached, could work out why everything happened to make the cake form that way; what pressures and environmental factors were in place to make that cake exactly as it was and from those it could work out what caused those and so on until it worked out the exact universe and how it was and how it existed, from the events which made the single piece of cake.

People would be put in the machine and then subject to this universe and as such would be rendered completely insane due to the insignificance they hold within the universe.

Great idea, greater author. RIP.

Wow! Very Good Post

Interesting experiment...is there any direct links where i can read more regarding this experiment ?

If you want a very good run down on what Chaos theory is, read the book "Chaos" by James Gleick. It's a good read and will give you a good grouding in the ideas.

This is an excellent book.

There will probably come a time that without an understanding of chaos
we can't increase our understanding of nature. Not only do things oper-
ate differently on the very small level but they may operate differently
depending on whether there's an even (chaotic) or odd (harmonic) number
of variables affecting them.

Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park

I don't remember much from the novel. I can only recount an incident where he pointed out a computer that was supposed to monitor the dinosaurs. However it only monitored the set amount of dinosaurs they already had and not the new ones born. In the novel it also pointed out that all the dinosaurs are female so that way they could control the amount of dinosaurs born. But then they started giving birth to males for some reason.



That depends on what they contribute I guess. But still, being humble is still the best way to go.

I think your contention is quite correct and it all comes down to monitoring and measurement of all the factors involved, if the scientists don't have lots of good, accurate data or bounds on the error then there will always be a unknown difference between the true system and the model, which can quickly spiral if there is feedback. Having said that nonlinear systems theory is quite advanced, almost fully understood, linearisations are used by most engineers for simplicity in analysis and usually take into account the "unforeseen" phenomena for given input sequences and are modelled as robust to them. Unknown inputs and distubances to the known input sequence can be estimated and included in the model as they arise from the data. Nonlinear and chaotic models can be estimated and modelled online using, among other techniques, neural networks or fuzzy models although should the underlying nonlinear system be known and variables be measurablebe then there are parrallels for most linear methods in the nonlinear literature.

admitedly, jurrassic park is always the first thing that springs to mind when someone metions chaos theory.
the scientists in jurrassic park used amphibian dna to fill the gaps in the dinosaur dna. i think that chaos theory applied because the supposedly male only dinosaurs started changing to females like some amphibians do.