voice;

[whethertheyshould]

I'm sure you're all aware, ah, of the perilous nature of the situation we're all in here. The question becomes, if we're unable to do anything but comply, what is the nature of our compliance? Does Jorgmund really think we're going to give everything our all at all times with the methods they use for securing our compliance?

I'm not good at doing that.

In any case, I suppose some introductions are in order. I'm Ian Malcolm. I'm your local chaotician, which means I am pretty good at predicting when things are about to go wrong.

I'm sure I just painted a big red target on my back but at this point I'm finding it hard to care.

Comments

[hallelujahjunction]

An admirable effort, I gotta say. Let's just say we don't know how hard these shocks go, and that while you may know what your limits are, there are always may be people who don't deserve to be hit with the metaphorical stick.

What I'm saying is that your skills will be valuable in the collective effort, but it is something of a collective.

[whethertheyshould]

Duly noted, duly noted. I'll keep that in mind, going forward.

[hallelujahjunction]

So, I gotta admit - like I said, no background in academia - what sort of field of study is chaoti...sm? [Dan's got no clue actually what work is correct here.] I could see it applying to anything from ecology to sociology, although I barely know what those are either.

[whethertheyshould]

[ Malcolm never tires of telling people about his field, even though it's more fun when he can use it to flirt with a pretty woman like he did with Dr. Sattler. Nevertheless, he launches into an explanation. ]

Chaos, chaos theory is the term we use. And it does apply, very good. In fact, it applies to, ah, any complex system with unpredictable elements. For example, the weather—the shorthand a lot of people use is the idea that a butterfly might flap its wings in Beijing, and in the US there's rain instead of sunshine. That's a simplified version of it, of course.

[hallelujahjunction]

[Dan, for the record, is genuinely interested; the truth is, despite the aw-shucks yokelisms, Dan's got a great deal of curiosity for the parts of the world and human thought he hasn't been exposed to. Dude loves TED Talks.]

So where most people would see a system and assume anything happening in it's just a dice roll, you look deeper into the unseen connections? [Like card-counting on a massive, exponentially more difficult level.] You're going to have a blast with the Stuff. That's uprooted a lot of the basics we've assumed our worlds are grounded in.

[whethertheyshould]

You've managed to distill chaos theory into one simple explanation.

And I do intend to try to study the behavior of the Stuff, if I can.

[hallelujahjunction]

I guess I gotta make it simple for a simple mind. I've got to absorb it all somehow. [He grins.]

I'll look forward to your updates, big guy. God knows we could use some actual knowledge about what's happening here.

[whethertheyshould]

Ohhh, I refuse to believe you're simple. Being learnéd is different from being intelligent. You strike me as very much on your toes about conditions here.

[ He grins. ]

A nickname, hm? I guess I know I've been accepted.

[hallelujahjunction]

I appreciate the vote of confident. You'll have me blushing.

[His grin gets bigger.] I could come up with a more tailored one for you.

[whethertheyshould]

I take it you keep 'Big Guy' in your back pocket for occasions like this one.

lmao that typo in my previous tag 8|

[hallelujahjunction]

I do. And I keep other things in my back pocket as well. [Flirt hard, flirt furious.]

[xrater]

He's a statistician who wants to make his work sound more interesting to laymen.

[hallelujahjunction]

Why so harsh? I'm plenty interested in either.

[whethertheyshould]

[ Malcolm does laugh at this comment. ]

Oh, yes, well, certainly there's that, but there's so much more to chaos theory than what can be quantified by classical statistics.