Did Badger screw everyone over without knowing?

I see the spirit of OP as a joke or just to pinpoint a butterfly effect, but I absolutely agree with you that the butterfly effect is too often confused with a way to pinpoint risponsabilities here.

I sure agree Breaking Bad is nothing but a giant one from start to end, with all characters involved. But the point of the metaphor was never to say that the butterfly is at fault for the tornade he causes, while totally unaware, and just flapping his wings or whatever. It's still about the description of a random universe, you can explain and retrace the chain of causes of consequences with the idea of small things having big impacts, it doesn't mean you predict this chain.

Applied to Breaking Bad universe: you can always go one further step back to retrace all the things leading to the outcome (generally more that ones), and it will lead to the pilot (only because you can't go further). I don't mean you can't pinpoint any risponsability, but I think it makes sense only by considering intents coming with the action, and the predictability of the outcome.

I risk to sound very pedantic and sorry about that, but it happens that I just visited the "butterfly effect" wikipedia (as I was looking for the english phrasing of it), and conveniently I found expressed what I think I mean, as it quotes here: <<Whereas Lorenz suggested correctly with his butterfly metaphor that predictability "is inherently limited", popular culture supposes that each event can be explained by finding the small reasons that caused it.>>

/r/breakingbad Thread Parent