What term describes the set of unattended consequences produced by an initial change?

The term that best captures the concept of unattended consequences produced by an initial change is the "butterfly effect." This phrase describes how small changes in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes, particularly within complex systems. It highlights the sensitivity of these systems to initial conditions, where a minor event, like the flapping of a butterfly's wings, could hypothetically set off a chain of events leading to significant consequences elsewhere, such as a storm or a weather pattern shift.

In terms of context, while reverberation can refer to the process of effects bouncing back through a system, it doesn’t encapsulate the idea of small changes leading to disproportionately large effects. Chaos theory deals with systems that appear random, but may be determined by underlying patterns and sensitivities to initial conditions. Feedback loops describe how outputs of a system are circled back as inputs, influencing the future behavior of that system, but don’t specifically highlight the unintended and often drastic consequences of small initial changes like the butterfly effect does.