Drunkard's Walk - Leonard Mlodinow [106]
If the deterministic view of the world were true, the same songs ought to have dominated in each of the eight worlds, and the popularity rankings in those worlds ought to have agreed with the intrinsic quality as determined by the isolated individuals. But the researchers found exactly the opposite: the popularity of individual songs varied widely among the different worlds, and different songs of similar intrinsic quality also varied widely in their popularity. For example, a song called “Lockdown” by a band called 52metro ranked twenty-six out of forty-eight in intrinsic quality but was the number-1 song in one world and the number-40 song in another. In this experiment, as one song or another by chance got an early edge in downloads, its seeming popularity influenced future shoppers. It’s a phenomenon that is well-known in the movie industry: moviegoers will report liking a movie more when they hear beforehand how good it is. In this example, small chance influences created a snowball effect and made a huge difference in the future of the song. Again, it’s the butterfly effect.
In our lives, too, we can see through the microscope of close scrutiny that many major events would have turned out differently were it not for the random confluence of minor factors, people we’ve met by chance, job opportunities that randomly came our way. For example, consider the actor who, for seven years starting in the late 1970s, lived in a fifth-floor walk-up on Forty-ninth Street in Manhattan, struggling to make a name for himself. He worked off-Broadway, sometimes far off, and in television commercials, taking all the steps he could to get noticed, build a career, and earn the money to eat an occasional hanger steak in a restaurant without having to duck out before the check arrived. And like many other wannabes, no matter how hard this aspiring actor worked to get the right parts, make the right career choices, and excel in his trade, his most reliable role remained the one he played in his other career—as a bartender. Then one day in the summer of 1984 he flew to Los Angeles, either to attend the Olympics (if you believe his publicist) or to visit a girlfriend (if you believe The New York Times). Whichever account is accurate, one thing is clear: the decision to visit the West Coast had little to do with acting and much to do with love, or at least the love of sports. Yet it proved to be the best career decision he ever made, most likely the best decision of his life.
The actor’s name is Bruce Willis, and while he was in Los Angeles, an agent suggested he go on a few television auditions.11 One was for a show in its final stages of casting. The producers already had a list of finalists in mind, but in Hollywood nothing is final until the ink on the contract is dry and the litigation has ended. Willis got his audition and landed the role—that of David Addison, the male lead paired with Cybill Shepherd in a new ABC offering called Moonlighting.
It might be tempting to believe that Willis was the obvious choice over Mr. X, the fellow at the top of the list when the newcomer arrived, and that the rest is, as they say, history. Since in hindsight we know that Moonlighting and Willis became huge successes, it is hard to imagine the assemblage of Hollywood decision makers, upon seeing Willis, doing anything but lighting up stogies as they celebrated their brilliant discovery and put to flame their now-outmoded