butterfly effect

the tendency of a complex, dynamic system to be sensitive to initial conditions, so that over time a small cause may have large, unpredictable effects (see sensitive dependence). The term refers to an example in which the fluttering of the wings of a butterfly in one part of the world is seen to contribute to the causation of a tornado in another. The term is used in chaos theory and more generally to describe nonlinear causal connections.

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Psychology term of the day

May 9th 2024

Megan’s law

an amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act requiring that state registries of convicted but released sex offenders be disseminated to the public so that communities will be notified of offenders’ presence in a particular neighborhood. More formally known as the Community Notification Act, it was initially passed in New Jersey in 1994 after a repeat sex offender murdered a 7-year-old girl named Megan Nicole Kanka; it became a federal law in 1996.