08:35:37 AM Jan 19th 2011 edited by LongLiveHumour
I think perhaps the trope title should be changed, as it may be confusing: I thought it meant the infamous "Quantum Butterfly" which causes storms simply by flapping its wings. It took me a while to work out the real meaning of the trope, which is nowhere near this one; and the idea of the quantum butterfly is quite widespread, so probably many people will have the same problem.
SotiCoto
04:14:27 AM May 13th 2011
Zhuangzi's butterfly reference predates chaos theory by quite a few centuries... Plus I can tell from your interpretation of the whole butterfly->hurricane deal that you don't understand its meaning very well (not to mention that it isn't used as often in fiction as this trope). So for now it is probably best to leave it as is.
And just remember when it comes down to the flap of a butterfly's wings determining whether a storm will or won't happen, it has also hinged on millions upon billions of other things in the process that are merely assumed to already be predetermined for the sake of one butterfly (and if one of them was different then the butterfly couldn't make an iota of difference).