Second Research Brainstorm Post

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
Aristotle

I really appreciate the significance of this quote. Aristotle's observation holds true both for social interactions, and for states of a "deterministic nonlinear system". In other words, Aristotle not only observed that lies get bigger and bigger after you start telling them, but that a slight difference in starting conditions between people's lives, complicated pendulums, throws of dice, and weather can lead to very different outcomes.

Below is an example of this observation. When a white jointed pendulum is released and a red jointed pendulum is released at the same time with "the least initial deviation from truth" (the starting position of the white pendulum), the difference in locations and speeds of the pendulums are "multiplied later a thousandfold".

A pair of jointed pendulums. Each begins very near the same location,
but as they continue on their paths, the difference in initial conditions
becomes clear and the two diverge. Note that both pendulums follow
only the same simple laws of physics.

This way things happen is noted by Barbara Erenreich in Nickel and Dimed as being important to social mobility. She, recounting her experiences living as a low-skill worker, laments the importance of initial conditions in life on success because few are able to take advantage of a lucky birth.

I'd been feeling pretty smug about my $500 efficiency, but of course it was made possible only by the $1,300 I had allotted myself for start-up costs when I began my low-wage life: $1,000 for the first month's rent and deposit, $100 for initial groceries and cash in my pocket, $200 stuffed away for emergencies. In poverty, as in certain propositions in physics, starting conditions are everything.

I don't want my work to be reduced to "certain propositions in physics", so I've decided to examine sensitivity on initial conditions from a human perspective.

I've been thinking about writing a short story or series of vignettes that portray this strong and sensitive dependence on initial conditions from the perspective of a high school student. I am intrigued by the possibility of exploring the differences that a small event can have on two days that are otherwise the same. To make this work, I would need a few devices:

1. Start both stories the same way, word for word.
2. Introduce a small, barely noticeable event that serves as the difference in initial conditions.
3. Slowly develop two different tones and moods to reflect changes in the protagonist's.
4. Present one or two events or objects in both stories with objectivity and clarity such that it becomes clear that the rules of nature advancing the plot are the same in each story.
1. Perhaps I will introduce minor person versus environment conflicts that expose the differences in the attitudes exhibited by both versions of the subject.
5. End at dramatically different points of conclusion.
1. Perhaps Subject A lives a normal day and Subject B Wins the lottery.
2. Perhaps Subject A ends up with a broken collarbone and Subject B gets lost in downtown Chicago
6. Typographically, I could take the beginning page of each story and print them onto the same side of the same piece of paper. They would begin exactly the same, but the page would quickly be covered in stray ink after a diverging event.

It is a shame that Hughes, the author of the bestselling Random Walks and Random Environments: Volume 1: Random Walks, decides that his "present work is necessarily restricted" to what he calls "classical chaos", or random patterns produced by probability. He makes it clear that he will not discuss any longer the Lorenz attractor or any of its cousins. Neither will he further mention the properties of such systems including dependence on initial conditions. That is where the research starts; where the creativity begins.