In 1926, a seemingly inconsequential vacation altered the fate of an entire country. Henry Stimson, an American politician, was visiting Kyoto, Japan, where he developed a fondness for the ancient city. Nineteen years later, as the U.S. Secretary of War, Stimson found himself making a decision that would alter the course of history: choosing not to target Kyoto for the first atomic bomb. Instead, Hiroshima became the target, and Kyoto was spared. What led to this decision? Stimson’s memories of a pleasant vacation nearly two decades earlier.
This is just one of the many stories that Brian Klaas, a political scientist and author, likes to share. Applying chaos theory to historical and everyday events, Klaas challenges the common perception that life is largely predictable. In fact, he says the world is far more random and chaotic than most of us realize. But, as he argues, embracing this chaos can actually empower us in surprising ways.
Modeling chaos
The foundation of Klaas’s argument is chaos theory, a concept rooted in physics and weather forecasting, but one that applies equally well to human history. The theory suggests that in a chaotic system, small changes can lead to massive, unpredictable outcomes. This idea is most commonly illustrated by the “butterfly effect,” where the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world might eventually cause a hurricane in another.
“Chaos theory’s origins come from weather forecasting,” Klaas explains. “A guy named Edward Norton Lorenz discovered chaos theory when he was doing early modeling of weather systems.”
In weather, just like in life, predicting the future with precision is impossible as the smallest variations lead to a cascade of unforeseen consequences. We use models which, for the most part, get the job done. But too often, we mistake the model for actual reality.
“When you think about modeling, we are often told to separate the signal from the noise and try to find the X that causes Y. The problem is the way that the world actually works is that everything has an infinite or near infinite number of causes. If you think about, World War Two. This stretches back to geography, geology, and the deposits of uranium around the atomic bomb. Who was born, who wasn’t born? All of these things have massive ripple effects that manifest themselves in human events.
“So what modeling tries to do, because it’s the only way to sort of cram an infinitely complex world into a computer model, is to radically simplify it,” Klaas says. “But the interconnected nature of the universe means you cannot discount the noise, because the noise ultimately does eventually matter.”
From major events to daily life
Klaas says when we try to make sense of the world, we often focus on the big, recognizable events — assassinations, wars, elections — because they are easier to grasp. Yet, examples like Stimson’s vacation and the decision to change the bombing target show that tiny, random events often hold the real power. As if to illustrate that point, the second atomic bomb site was also affected by chance.
“The second bomb was supposed to go to a place called Kokura, but it didn’t get dropped there because of a passing cloud that obscured the bomb site,” Klaas explains. “That cloud meant the second bomb went to Nagasaki. If you think about these principles in science, these chaotic dynamics can also apply to how human history can be swayed.”
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Perhaps the most interesting thing about this way of looking at things is that it doesn’t only apply to major historical events. What’s true on the grand scale of world history is equally true in our personal lives. We tend to believe that we are in control, but Klaas argues there’s much more randomness than we’d like to think.
Modern conveniences like GPS, food delivery apps, and online shopping create a sense of mastery over our environment. We can plan our days down to the minute and track everything from our fitness goals to our package deliveries. Yet, despite this illusion of control, the world is more unpredictable than ever.
The unexpected can always happen — an economic downturn, a pandemic, or even a traffic jam on the way to work. Technology may give us real-time updates, but it can’t protect us from the random fluctuations that constantly shape our lives.
Are we truly in control?
“There’s this bizarre aspect where we feel more in control of our daily lives than has ever been true in human history, at the same time that the overall structure of the world is changing at an unprecedented pace,” Klaas says.
For hundreds of thousands of years, Klaas says, our ancestors lived in largely similar ways. They did more or less the same thing. Now, society is changing significantly in less than a generation. So, it’s paradoxical that when things are changing faster than ever, we feel like we’re more in control than ever.
The researcher says that every action you take, no matter how trivial, interacts with countless other factors in unpredictable ways. Even something as trivial as hitting the snooze button for five more minutes versus waking up directly can make a significant difference.
“If you imagine hitting the snooze button when you wake up today, or you rewind the clock by five seconds and you don’t hit the snooze button, I think it’s a discernible fact that your life will forever be different.
“That’s because the ripple effects of that snooze button choice will cause you to have different conversations with different people, possibly to have different interactions with different people, and those will manifest over time. When we think about the long tentacles of how we end up in jobs or meeting our spouses and so on, often everything has to be exactly as it was for that outcome to be the eventual fate of your life and so on.”
So what we tend to do is to find shortcuts and optimize them, which gives us an illusion of control. Perhaps, the opposite would be better.
Resilience over optimization
It’s hard to argue against Klaas. I spoke to him at the Cheltenham Science Festival and our peaceful interview was “ambushed” by several buses of schoolchildren, forcing us to take a short break. So, how should we navigate a world where randomness plays such a large role?
For Klaas, the answer lies in building resilience rather than trying to optimize every aspect of our lives. While modern life often pushes us to eliminate inefficiency — whether in business, politics, or our personal routines — Klaas argues that a little inefficiency can actually be a good thing. In a chaotic world, it creates the slack we need to absorb shocks.
“We should be building much more towards resilience and doing much more experimentation,” Klaas says. “In highly uncertain contexts, which is the modern world, you should have basically some slack and some resilience as a matter of planning,” he says. “We are embedding systemic risk into systems at the same time that we are fixating on optimization to the absolute limit.”
Klaas points to the Suez Canal blockage in 2021 as an example. A single ship getting stuck in the canal caused an estimated $50 billion in economic damage. It disrupted global supply chains for months. The canal system was optimized for efficiency, but it had no slack to accommodate such a failure.
“My argument is that in highly uncertain contexts, which is the modern world, you should have basically some slack and some resilience as a matter of planning. And I think we’re drifting away from that at a time in which we need it the most.”
Experiment every now and then
Several other recent examples show that we live in a world that is swayed by flukes. Small things can truly make a big difference. Take, for instance, a mutation of a virus that caused a pandemic for two years. In this context, a world of resilience is a much bigger priority now when our social worlds deprioritize this.
I mean, if you think about quarterly profits, ‘life hacks’ or strategies for daily living, everything is centred around eliminating inefficiency. But, sometimes, inefficiency provides critical leeway in systems.
So, Klaas advocates for more experimentation in our lives. In a world that’s constantly changing and inherently unpredictable, sticking rigidly to the same routine or strategy can be detrimental. Experimentation allows us to adapt to unforeseen circumstances and even find better alternatives.
He gives the example of a 2014 strike on the London Tube, which forced many commuters to find alternative routes to work. After the strike, 5% of the population stuck with their new routes, having discovered a better way to commute.
“A lot of what our life is supposed to be, and the way self-help gurus tell us, is to find the optimal pathway,” Klaas says. “But that only makes sense if the world is static and fully understood, and I don’t think that applies to 21st-century complexity.”
Instead, Klaas encourages us to embrace randomness, make changes, and be open to new experiences, even if it means moving away from the so-called “optimal” path.
Human desire for order
Klaas’s argument isn’t just for individuals — it applies to entire societies. Governments, businesses, and institutions need to adopt long-term planning that prioritizes resilience over short-term profits or political gains. This can be difficult in a world where quarterly profits and four-year election cycles dominate decision-making.
But it’s not going so well, and a lot of that boils down to our social and political system.
“We have learned no lessons from the pandemic,” says Klaaas. “There have been no efforts to try to create more resilient systems in politics. And all of the reward structures when it comes to democratic processes are imperfect. For example, you do long-term planning, it is highly likely that your successor from the rival party will benefit from it because they’ll be in power at the point when it pays off.”
The problem, he explains, is that planning for long-term resilience often benefits future generations, while the costs are borne in the present. This makes it politically unpopular and difficult to implement. Yet, as Klaas points out, the 21st century has been marked by a series of unplanned, catastrophic events. From 9/11 to the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, none of these events were foreseen. The lesson, he says, is clear: we must plan for uncertainty.
Embracing chaos
Embracing chaos and uncertainty, according to Klaas, can feel daunting at first. Many people may respond to the idea of a chaotic world with feelings of helplessness or nihilism, believing that nothing they do matters. But Klaas insists that this is the wrong takeaway. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. In his book, Fluke, he makes a strong argument for that.
“The third part of my book’s subtitle is Why Everything We Do Matters, and I believe that to my core,” he says. “If every choice we make reshapes the world and the trajectory of our lives, then there is no meaningless part of existence.”
Even though we may not have control over everything, Klaas believes we have the power to influence everything. Every small action we take has the potential to ripple out in unpredictable ways, affecting not only our own future but the future of others and, in some cases, even the world.
“It’s not that I have immense control or perfect agency,” Klaas concludes. “It’s that what I do is important.”
In a world shaped by randomness and chaos, this may be the most empowering message of all. We may not control everything, but everything we do still matters. And in that realization, Klaas believes, lies the potential for profound change.
Brian Klaas’ new book, Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters is currently discounted on Amazon.
You can watch our interview with Brian Klaas in its entirety here:
