A little loop of chaos

Originally published 4 March 1991

“So what’s this lit­tle loop on the back of the shirt?” I point­ed to the cloth loop sewn into the yoke below the collar.

The sales­per­son shrugged. “Dun­no. To hang the shirt up with, I guess.”

“Are you kid­ding? Can you imag­ine how a shirt would look after hang­ing all night by that loop. It would poke out in the back like a pyramid.”

“So don’t use the loop.”

“Then why should I have to pay for it? Why did they put it there in the first place? I’ll bet you the price of this shirt that no one has ever hung a shirt by one of these loops. Talk about use­less. Talk about friv­o­lous. Talk about…”

It was late in the day. She nod­ded weari­ly. “So don’t buy the shirt. If you don’t like the loop, don’t buy the shirt.”

“But I like the shirt. I just don’t like the loop.”

She drummed her fin­gers on the counter. “It’s not impor­tant,” she said, “and it does­n’t add much to the cost of the shirt.”

I asked: “Did you ever hear of the But­ter­fly Effect?”

She shook her head.

“It’s the lat­est rage in sci­ence. Chaos. Frac­tals. That sort of thing. A new kind of math­e­mat­ics that sci­en­tists use to describe com­plex sys­tems. Sys­tems that depend on a zil­lion vari­ables, with lots of feed­back. Sys­tems like the weath­er, for instance. Or the world econ­o­my. What these chaos sci­en­tists have real­ized is that com­plex sys­tems nat­u­ral­ly evolve towards a state where tiny changes can some­times result in huge con­se­quences. A but­ter­fly flaps its wings in Chi­na, gives a lit­tle shove to the air, and that bit of air dis­turbs a big­ger bit of air, and the big­ger bit dis­turbs some­thing else, and — well, you get the idea, next thing you know we have a bliz­zard in Boston all because a but­ter­fly flut­tered its wings in Chi­na. The But­ter­fly Effect, they call it.”

“Are you some kind of nut?”

“Self-orga­nized crit­i­cal­i­ty, thats the tech­ni­cal term. A kind of bal­anced dis­or­der that we call order. A sand pile, for instance. A con­i­cal pile of sand. Drop one more grain onto the slope and it will prob­a­bly do noth­ing, or it may start a lit­tle tum­ble of grains, or — if the slope is on the verge of chaos, in the crit­i­cal state — one tiny grain dropped onto the pile can cause a cat­a­stroph­ic avalanche. Half the pile comes tum­bling down.”

“You’re a nut. You are def­i­nite­ly a nut.”

“Or con­sid­er the econ­o­my. The econ­o­my is much too com­plex to be described by the old-style deter­min­is­tic math­e­mat­ics. Too many inter­con­nect­ed vari­ables, too many kinds of feed­back. But the econ­o­my main­tains itself near the crit­i­cal state. Oh, yeah, we have a reces­sion now and then, usu­al­ly mild, occa­sion­al­ly deep. Then, along comes a lit­tle glitch, a tiny trad­ing aber­ra­tion ampli­fied by com­put­ers, and — bang! — almost total col­lapse. Black Monday.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Earth­quakes too. The crust of the earth is in the crit­i­cal state. Lots of tremors, indi­vid­u­al­ly unpre­dictable. A few mod­er­ate quakes. And occa­sion­al­ly the Big One. Frac­tal math­e­mat­ics describes the dis­tri­b­u­tion of earth­quake intensities.

“Look, do you want the shirt or not? I’ve got oth­er cus­tomers you know. I can’t spend all day lis­tenin’ to crazy theories.”

“Madam, I’m not talk­ing crazy the­o­ries, I’m talk­ing about the shirt. I’m talk­ing about this lit­tle loop. Do the shirt man­u­fac­tur­ers know what they are mess­ing around with? Do they real­ize that fash­ions are a sys­tem every bit as com­pli­cat­ed as the weath­er, or the econ­o­my. Talk about feed­back! Talk about self-orga­nized crit­i­cal­i­ty! Sew these sil­ly lit­tle loops onto shirts and who knows what might happen.”

“I could call the police.”

“This whole fash­ion thing is a mas­sive sys­tem of inter­act­ing vari­ables. Cuffs or no cuffs, belt or sus­penders, wide tie or thin tie, side vents or back vent, two but­tons or three. A thou­sand col­ors and cuts and acces­sories. It’s as com­plex as the econ­o­my. Or the weath­er. Or the pile of sand. So what hap­pens? A shirt man­u­fac­tur­er decides to sew loops on shirts. OK, this time the result was neg­li­gi­ble. But it might have been cat­a­stroph­ic. A cat­a­stroph­ic avalanche of fash­ion chaos. Bell-bot­toms. Caps with ear flaps. Buck­les on the backs of trousers. Round-tipped col­lars. Nehru jack­ets. God knows what we might have end­ed up with.”

“I’m dial­ing. I’m dial­ing now.”

“Blue suede shoes. Pink shirts with black knit ties. Bermu­da shorts.”

“It’s ring­ing, Mister.”

“Garters. Knicker­bock­ers. Watch pock­ets. Zoot suits. Bowler hats. Pow­dered wigs.”

“The cops are on the line.”

“OK, OK. Don’t get so hot under the col­lar. I’ll take the shirt.”