The flapping of a butterfly

The existence of a given action or situation can provoke a series of successive situations or actions that end up causing a considerable effect that does not seem to correspond to the situation or element that started it.

This concept stems from the experiences of meteorologist Edward Lorenz, who generated the term in 1973 in order to explain the impossibility of making totally reliable long-term weather forecasts due to the accumulation of variables that can modify atmospheric behavior.

What the butterfly effect explains is that apparently simple and innocuous alterations of a variable or action can generate massive effects, being the first trigger of a process that, as it propagates, acquires more and more strength. This is why it is said, in a variation of the popular saying, that the flapping of a butterfly in Hong Kong can cause a hurricane in New York: the slightest alteration in the same process can give rise to very different and even totally unexpected results.