Reframing the Butterfly Effect

"Everything happens for a reason." If you, like me, find yourself grinding your teeth when that banal attempt at reassurance is offered to others during moments of crisis, I can heartily recommend this thought-provoking book by UK-based American social scientist Brian Klaas.

‘Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters’ is a fascinating defence of a more sophisticated concept of determinism, that black hat philosophical opponent to the modern world’s cherished concept of ‘free will’. In a sense it's a positive reframing of chaos theory, or the 'butterfly effect' (the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could trigger a tornado in Texas).

Rather than obsessing over linking every effect to a single cause, we need to understand that everything we do matters. We are part of a highly complex and dynamic system, which means we need to surrender our God complex, focus less on control, and more on cooperation. That is our only hope in dealing with pandemics, climate change and other existential challenges.

Using examples from history and from his own life, Klaas explains the difference between the convergence theory of our fates (‘everything happens for a reason’) and the contingency theory (‘stuff happens’). After reading this book, I challenge anyone to still adhere to the former framework.

Klaas opens with a particularly stark illustration of contingency theory. In the 1920s, a US businessman and his wife vacationed in Kyoto and were charmed by the old Japanese capital. Twenty years later, that man was the US Secretary of War. On hearing the US military planned to drop the first atomic bomb on Kyoto, he intervened and suggested they spare that city.. At the last moment, Hiroshima was chosen instead.

In other words, a random seemingly non-consequential event (two American civilians' choice of holiday destination in peacetime) led to a beautiful and ancient city being spared from total vaporisation in a world war and another being chosen in its place. Tens of thousands of people, who would have otherwise have been killed, survived to live another day.

“Ours is an intertwined world,” Klaas writes. “Once you accept that entangled existence, it becomes clear that chance, chaos, and arbitrary accidents play an outsize role in why things happen. In an intertwined world, flukes matter.”

Of course, this idea is wholly at odds with our cherished Western notion of linear progress and modernity, influenced for the last 300 years in science by Newtonian physics and in economics by Adam Smith and others who view the economy as a giant equilibrium machine.

We assume that every effect has a specific cause, that to understand something you just need to understand its constituent parts and that if we understand patterns from the past we will better understand the future. But these assumptions just don't hold true in complex adaptive systems.

"Complex systems, such as locust swarms or modern human society, involve diverse, interacting and interconnected parts (or individuals) that adapt to one another," Klaas writes. "The system, like our world, is in constant flux. If you change one aspect of the system, other parts spontaneously adjust, creating something altogether new."

In such an intertwined world, chance, chaos and arbitrary accidents will play an outsized role in why things happen. And this risk is made even greater by our obsession with ever greater efficiency and optimisation. Modern social and economic systems are now so connected we are left with little slack if something unexpected happens. We saw this most recently in the pandemic, where a confluence of minor supply change disruptions fed into the biggest price shock since the 1970s. And we see it in climate change as tipping points are reached, with massive knock-on effects to mass migration, energy costs, food production and geopolitical strains.

It is utterly clear to me that, contrary to our individualist ethos, egocentricity and notions of being in control, we are not above it all - directing the world around us - but part of an incredibly complex web of interconnections and random forces.

While this book's deterministic message might sound depressing and lead readers to conclude humanity's efforts to improve our world are pointless, Klaas actually takes a positive view of inherent uncertainty, arguiong that "while we control nothing, we influence everything". But it will take a mindset shift by humanity in realising we are part of an organic whole, not little autonomous units of production unconnected from the natural world around us.

"All of us matter, though some of us will influence events within our lifetimes in more or less profound and visible ways," he writes. "But if we want to maximise the chance that our actions will matter even more, then the best pathway comes from one of the finest innovations our species has ever evolved: cooperation. Humans who work together create change together."

This is a book to came back to. There is so much truth here. Highly recommended.