I don’t understand this concept of “chaos” in a universe governed by physics.
Just because something is nearly infinitely complicated, doesn’t mean predicting outcomes would be actually impossible. If the universe produces the outcome, doesn’t that mean it’s following a rule set?
Do I fundamentally not understand chaos theory?
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>Just because something is nearly infinitely complicated, doesn’t mean predicting outcomes would be actually impossible
Correct. It’s not a matter of complexity.
>If the universe produces the outcome, doesn’t that mean it’s following a rule set?
There’s a rule-set for sure. But the [Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle) shows us that it’s impossible to measure a thing without affecting the thing, changing it’s state. That includes interacting with it in any way. We will fundamentally never know the exact details of a thing to perfectly predict it’s future.
Without being able to know the starting state, we can only ever have a best guess at what it’s going to do in the future.
And with the butterfly effect and chaotic systems, lacking the small details leads to very large differences. Yes, chaos theory really does hinge on lacking the small details. We fundamentally cannot know the smallest of small details without scrambling the details. It’s a pair of dice that get shaken up every time we open the box.
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