Explorations

Okay, it’s cool, but look at what it’s showing, too: there’s an initial discharge (big flash), followed by many trails as the current tries to find a path. Those trails are essentially random (I’ll bet you that each branch is somehow Markovian from the previous instant) until one of them finds its way to the ground. At that point, all the current follows that path, and there are actually several surges, but now all following the single ionized pathway to ground.

Now, think about Black Swans and stock trading patterns: each of the trial paths might correspond to one trader’s random walk. Then one path “wins” and now it looks like it’s the whole “lightning strike.”

Now think about evolution: lots of different mutations happen, and die out. One of them “wins”, and it suddenly looks like that was the preferred path all along.