004 - Audio

[whattheytellyou]

[No video today for Sarah. She doesn't want to scare people with how tired she appears. She sounds calm and collected, as always.]

Dr. Ian Malcolm explained Chaos Theory very well. He said:

"Chaos theory says two things. First, that complex systems like the weather have an underlying order. Second, the reverse of that - that simple systems can

Comments

[most_feared]

I dunno. The behavior is fairly predictable on the part of each party. They've been researching the floods for quite a while and haven't drawn a steady conclusion. I've heard the theory that the Admiral relies on dimensional instability to power the ship. I've even contemplated that he's just a lone man trying to control a vessel far too large for him, or there might be other non-bipedal vessels out there with their own courses of disaster.

Then I think, someone can fret over where all this chaos might lead, but there's always the unquestionable fact that in the end, no matter what you do, no matter how you prepare, entropy always wins.

[whattheytellyou]

Behavior isn't predictable in complex systems; even if you think you know what Arthas might do tomorrow - killing twenty people, for instance - maybe he'll decide to go have tea instead.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder if that's all chaos theory really says: here's a complex system, it's going to behave unpredictably - but with predictable results.

But I'm not fretting; I'm just amazed that in this isolated community, that particular theory can be observed.

Then again, this journal entry could lead to an observer effect.

[most_feared]

Mostly likely it would. Anything capable of thought is usually inclined to set that thought to interfering with whatever surroundings it's aware of, or theorizing on results of said interference.

Is it bothering you?

[whattheytellyou]

The observer effect?

I'm sort of betting on it for a good night's sleep at this point, K.

[gotgreenmagic]

I like the seventh one better for the Barge. Feels like we're in a state of 'partial restabilization' pretty much constantly.

[whattheytellyou]

Whatever it is, I hope it lasts at least ten hours. Sleep, a shower, a hot meal, and then we can start moving toward the edge of chaos again.

I WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN. <3

[whattheytellyou]

You'd probably appreciate chaos theory, O'Bri-

Comrade.

It brings order to chaos by making it explicable. Weather patterns explained by the butterfly effect. Nonlinear dynamics. Strange attractors. It wraps things up in a nice, neat package of mathematics, physics, and theory.

Unfortunately, life isn't always going to fit into that package. Life is messy.

EDIT to add...

[whattheytellyou]

Something like that. It's very basic, I suppose, where creating order is concerned. It's only an attempt to give explanation to the inexplicable. Weather patterns, like I said. Theories aren't fact.

Your life sounds very clean.

Sterile.

I can't help but notice your day begins and ends with work.

[mrs_persson]

There are many people where I come from who would be surprised by the idea that Chaos had any kind of organisation behind it at all. What you describe puts me more in mind of what we might call the Balance.

[whattheytellyou]

The Balance?

[mrs_persson]

The great cosmic tension between Law and Chaos, or order and entropy, or stillness and motion-all different names for the same oppositional forces, you might say. Without Law, you get pure formless entropy; without Chaos, order stagnates and can't progress. The duality extrapolates into day to day life as well-politics, for instance.

[ourlastbesthope]

The pattern that emerges from what I've seen so far is that we normally return to the third. But maybe I'm just being pessimistic.

And, really, finding any kind of pattern to this place even if it is chaos theory should be more of a comfort than a fright.

[whattheytellyou]

I'm concerned people will confuse theory for fact - that I'll say something along the lines of my original entry and it might become a superstition. We'll start calling floods and ports a return to the third configuration, people will panic, and it'll all end in a sort of cascade failure. We'll create the later configurations ourselves because we believe in the third.

...I told K I hope I've created an observer effect. Now I'm starting to hope I haven't.

I'm sorry, I don't think we've met.

[ourlastbesthope]

I doubt it. Enough people here will either ignore, not understand, or pass by this information without giving it a second thought. You've done nothing more than put a label on something we've already been suspecting.

No, we haven't. I'm Robert Capa. I'm a warden and I work in the lab.

[whattheytellyou]

Sarah Harding. I didn't know there was a lab here - I tried exploring a bit before everything went to hell, but it's a big ship.