Yes, some prediction models are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. But I doubt very much if a flap or even a sneeze can actually be the key thing that determines Hurricane or Not Hurricane in real life. The weather system would have to not only be extremely unstable, but in just the right way for that input to be relevant at such a scale.
You should still be careful with butterflies, though. They’re a bit fragile.
If everything else is constant then a flag is what determines whether a particular hurricane (that exist far enough in the future) happens or not happens. There’s a causal chain between the flag and the hurricane.
If you care about something else besides the causal chain that defines some notion of “key thing” you actually have to say what you mean with “key thing”.
A sneeze can determine much more than hurricane/no hurricane. It can determine the identities of everyone who exists, say, a few hundred years into the future and onwards.
Yes, some prediction models are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. But I doubt very much if a flap or even a sneeze can actually be the key thing that determines Hurricane or Not Hurricane in real life. The weather system would have to not only be extremely unstable, but in just the right way for that input to be relevant at such a scale.
You should still be careful with butterflies, though. They’re a bit fragile.
If everything else is constant then a flag is what determines whether a particular hurricane (that exist far enough in the future) happens or not happens. There’s a causal chain between the flag and the hurricane.
If you care about something else besides the causal chain that defines some notion of “key thing” you actually have to say what you mean with “key thing”.
A sneeze can determine much more than hurricane/no hurricane. It can determine the identities of everyone who exists, say, a few hundred years into the future and onwards.
If you’re not already familiar, this argument gets made all the time in debates about “consequentialist cluelessness”. This gets discussed, among other places, in this interview with Hilary Greaves: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/hilary-greaves-global-priorities-institute/. It’s also related to the paralysis argument I mentioned in my other comment.