>[!abstract]
>In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state (Wikipedia, 2025).
>[!related]
>- **North** (upstream): [[Nonlinear system]]
>- **West** (similar): —
>- **East** (different): [[The other butterfly effect]]
>- **South** (downstream): —