To be specific: does chaos theory relate to the study of consciousness (and if yes, how)?
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Imagine you’re blowing up a balloon, and you decide to draw a squiggly line on it with a marker. As you keep blowing up the balloon, that squiggly line will start to twist and turn in unpredictable ways. That’s kind of like what chaos theory is about.
Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with systems that appear to be random and unpredictable, but they actually follow very specific mathematical rules. It’s all about how tiny changes in the initial conditions of a system can lead to dramatically different outcomes. This is often referred to as the “butterfly effect,” where the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world could, in theory, set off a chain of events that leads to a tornado on the other side of the world.
Now, how does this relate to the study of consciousness? Well, some people have suggested that the brain, which is responsible for consciousness, is a complex system that may exhibit chaotic behavior. In this view, the brain’s intricate network of neurons and synapses could be influenced by tiny, seemingly insignificant factors that lead to our thoughts, emotions, and experiences.
Chaos theory essentially says that the outcome of some choice is vastly disproportionate to the actual choice that is made.
Many choices you make lead to understandable changes in your outcome. For example: you throw a ball and it hits the target. If you throw it just a little harder, it lands a little further away. Even harder, it lands just a bit further away again.
A chaotic system would mean that a small change, like throwing the ball just 0.1 mph faster, could mean it goes a little further, or it could punch a hole through the target. Or zip off at an odd angle.
A classic example is orbits of objects when there are more than 2 objects involved. Lets say a red, and blue object. With these the orbits look like a simple overlapping pair of ovals. Red and blue going away, then back, and circling around eachother.
With a third Green object it starts to snarl into a mess. Green comes in disturbing first Blue then Red. It can send one flying away entirely lets say the Blue object.
This system is chaotic not because it gets messy and tangled. It’s chaotic because if you change the starting speed of any object (lets pick our interloper Green) by the tiniest fraction you can get a vastly different outcome. The original snarling mess will start the same, but very shortly you can get a vastly different outcome. Remember how Blue was sent off to never return? Blue stays around this time, and Redobject gets sent flying off entirely. A drastically different outcome.
Change the speed to be just a little bit higher again, and the result isn’t that blue is sent off earlier or faster. no, this Time Green gets flung back out never to return…. Go a little faster again, and maybe they all orbit for a long time, then Red and Blue collide….
The entire process is completely determined and can be simulated step by step. But there is no ‘formula’ that works ahead of time. And any simulation will have wildly different outcomes with only small tweaks to the starting conditions. The smaller the tweak the longer it looks similar, but it really isn’t that long before you get hugely different results.
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Weather is another chaotic system. Even with great measurements, having one of the many details off by a small amount means your predictions rapidly spin off into the “could do almost anything” territory rather quickly. We can predict weather well for a day, passably for about 3 days, barely after a week, and only the largest trends longer than that.
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Conciousness with the itneractions of neurons, chemistry, stimuli etc, is another such system. A small change of the inputs can create wildly different outputs.
Chaos theory is simply the idea that effects can compound and interact with each other in so many ways that a small change in starting conditions can result in an enormous change later on. Not that this relates to chaos theory directly, but a good example is when you look at something far away, and shift the angle of your eyes ever so slightly toward something else, the distance between the two things can be huge.
>To be specific: does chaos theory relate to the study of consciousness (and if yes, how)?
True consciousness like Qualia? No. We don’t know what consciousness is and we may never know. It’s one of the big mysteries of our existence. Some people believe chaos theory is related to consciousness but it’s pure speculation for now.
Two big ideas:
1. A sufficiently complex system will behave in unpredictable ways over a long enough time span.
2. All systems are sufficiently complex on a large enough scale.
So you have easy systems to think about. Weather and the stock market. Very complex, lots of moving parts. We can’t know enough of it precisely enough to make meaningful predictions into the future.
But then you have billard balls on a reasonably level pool table. A simple enough system. Weight of the ball, force applied, elasticity of the bumpers and balls, friction with the felt, etc. Simple enough, compared to predicting a hurricane. But small imperfections in the table and ball and exact way it’s struck by the player will eventually cause the ball to behave in an unexpected way, provided it could keep sliding forever without slowing down or falling into a hole.
Also I’m told it has a whole lot to do with dinosaurs reproducing.
“does chaos theory relate to the study of consciousness”
No. Chaos theory concerns how small effects can cause substantial consequences over time. The two don’t relate.
I heard the following explanation: The exact knowledge of the present allows the exact prediction of the future. But does the approximate knowledge of the present enables an approximate prediction of the future? Not necessarily.
Chaos Theory describes systems where this is not the case.
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