Ada Palmer

Don't argue, simulate.

Map the probability distribution.

But this raises a deeper question.

Given the butterfly effect, can actors in chaotic systems achieve their goals at all?

If small perturbations cascade unpredictably through chaotic systems, then perhaps historical actors are merely throwing pebbles into turbulent water, creating ripples they cannot control, in directions they cannot predict.

They perturb the system, yes, but with unknown and unknowable consequences.

Palmer argues otherwise.

Her students don't just perturb the system at random.

They achieve goals.

Not perfectly, not completely, but meaningfully.

As she observes, no one controlled what happened, and no one could predict what happened, but those who worked hard, most of them succeeded in diverting most of the damage, achieving many of their goals, preventing the worst.

Not all, but most.

Florence doesn't always survive, but when Florentine players work skillfully, it survives more often.

The outcomes aren't predetermined, but neither are they purely random.

This is what Machiavelli asserted.

In The Prince, Chapter 25, he writes, I compare, fortune, to one of those violent rivers, which when swelled up floods the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, carrying the soil away from one place to another.

Everyone flees before it, all yield to its violence without any means to stop it.

And yet, though floods are like this, it is not the case that men, in fair weather, cannot prepare for this, with dikes and barriers, so that if the waters rise again, they either flow away via canal, or their force is not so unrestrained and destructive.

End quote.

The flood comes, but prepared actors can channel it.