What Are the New Implications of Chaos for Unpredictability?

DOI10.1093/BJPS/AXN053zbMATH Open1177.37017arXiv1310.1576OpenAlexW2111479915WikidataQ56040456 ScholiaQ56040456MaRDI QIDQ3638862FDOQ3638862

Authors: Charlotte Werndl 

Publication date: 28 October 2009

Published in: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: From the beginning of chaos research until today, the unpredictability of chaos has been a central theme. It is widely believed and claimed by philosophers, mathematicians and physicists alike that chaos has a new implication for unpredictability, meaning that chaotic systems are unpredictable in a way that other deterministic systems are not. Hence one might expect that the question 'What are the new implications of chaos for unpredictability?' has already been answered in a satisfactory way. However, this is not the case. I will critically evaluate the existing answers and argue that they do not fit the bill. Then I will approach this question by showing that chaos can be defined via mixing, which has not been explicitly argued for. Based on this insight, I will propose that the sought-after new implication of chaos for unpredictability is the following: for predicting any event all sufficiently past events are approximately probabilistically irrelevant.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.1576

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zbMATH Keywords

chaosmixingprobabilityunpredictability

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Ergodicity, mixing, rates of mixing (37A25) Stability theory for smooth dynamical systems (37C75)

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