Ghostcrawler chats about interrupts at the Dev Watercooler

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-29-2011 @ 7:43PM

GhostWhoWalks said...

Not quite. The butterfly effect is when an action has unintended consequences, not consequences that have no clear connection to their cause.

The common metaphor of "a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world" isn't that there is no logical reason why a hurricane would be caused by a butterfly, it's that a single action can create a cascade of events that results in something happening miles away that SEEMS unrelated. A better metaphor, in fact, would be "the kingdom was lost for want of a nail"; making one tiny change can set off a chain reaction that throws everything else out of whack.

The domino effect is similar, but the chain reaction and resulting effects are all intended.

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