THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

The butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. This is sometimes presented as esoteric behavior, but can be exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.
It is a common subject in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" scenarios where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes.



//////////////////CONTINENTAL DRIFT=The most famous early proponent of continental drift, German geophysicist Alfred Wegener, was received skeptically when he proposed his theory in 1912, partly because he couldn't explain what might cause giant landmasses to move around. Expanding-earth advocates thought they could. They posited that once upon a time the earth had been much smaller and was completely encased in the supercontinent we now call Pangaea. Volcanic activity caused the planet to expand, cracking Pangaea apart like the shell of a boiled egg and leading to the eventual scattering of the continents.

Obvious objection: Where was all the extra volume that went into the expanding earth supposed to be coming from?



//////////////////////The most difficult thing in life is sorting our own head. Once you have done that life is always easy. Life is difficult when we have a choice. Life is alwasy easy if we have no choice because we just get on with it.



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From Chapter I: The Yoga of Arjuna's Despondancy

I.26. Then, Arjuna (son of Pritha) saw there (in the armies)
stationed, fathers and grandfathers, teachers, maternal uncles,
brothers, sons, grandsons, and friends too.

I.27. (Arjuna saw) fathers-in-law and friends also in both the
armies. The son of Kunti, Arjuna, seeing all those kinsmen thus
standing arryed, spoke this, sorrowfully filled with deep pity.





//////////////////////Long-Lost Cousins

In contrast to chimpanzees, who live in male-dominated societies with infanticidal tendencies and other forms of lethal aggression, bonobos live in societies that are highly tolerant and peaceful thanks to female dominance, which maintains group cohesion and regulates tensions through sexual behavior.




//////////////////// Bonobos are notorious for their sexuality. Females rub their clitorises together; males have sexual activity with males. Neither age nor gender seems to matter. Sex is a tension-relieving activity in the group, used to soothe ruffled tempers or form alliances. It also appears to be a negotiating activity, engendering a high level of tolerance in bonobos.

So what we have are chimps who cooperate but aren't very tolerant, and bonobos who are very tolerant but don't really cooperate in the wild. What probably happened six million years ago, when hominids split from the ancestor we share with chimpanzees and bonobos, is that we became very tolerant, and this allowed us to cooperate in entirely new ways. Without this heightened tolerance, we would not be the species we are today.






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