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Pepek, that would be difficult since we saw Smokey in the 1800s, and we saw Eloise as a young woman in the 1950s.
Lisa, apparently! I have an essay he wrote about it.
Rabbit, I don't think it's bad story telling to introduce plot points that are enacted by characters who are wrong. Or to show us things that are deceiving or ambiguous to keep us guessing about the true nature of things. This has been common in movies and books for a long time. It's been common in Lost for six years! Though I certainly agree there are problematic aspects with my theory. There are problematic aspects with all theories. As we've learned slowly throughout this season, altTime is far from (just) being "an alternate time line created by the nuke". I happen to think it's FAR from that. But at the very least it's MUCH more complicated than that statement.
As for Esau having to do with it, yes, nothing in the episode suggested it. My brain did that all on it's own! I've been thinking along these lines for a few weeks now, since the Richard episode, and it congealed more fully last night.
Leonide, only Faraday's memory seems to hinge around that incident. Who else's has? I'm not sure I get your second question. In my theory, the bomb just serves to flash them to 2007, and has no relationship with altTime beyond the fact that it enabled it to happen by flashing the Losties back to 2007, thus allowing for the events of this season on Island, which somehow lead to the existence of altTime.
Anyway, this conversation is co-opting what was a fantastic episodes regardless of who is right about this.
....
What exactly was Widmore's plan for Desmond? What was his sacrifice?
Why did Desmond go so willingly with Sayid? Why was he so quick to do what Widmore asked? Does he fully remember the events of altTime? Or...better yet, how about this...The two Desmond's have switched places. The one on the Island, who so willingly agreed to help Widmore, is the one from altTime who is Widmore's best bud. And the one in altTime, who asked for the flight manifest, knows all the Losties, and knows exactly who to find. That'd be kind of neat.
What does Esau have planned for Desmond?
How does Eloise know everything she knows?
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You know how Desmond seemed really compliant and laid back at the end of the episode? Like he'd lost his passion?
What if the reason Sayid isn't feeling anything, the reason Desmond's passion seems to go away, and the reason that people kind of remember stuff from both timelines is that their conciousness is somehow split between the two timelines.
In Sayid's case, he's gone over. MIB somehow let so much of him go over to the other side that he's lost all feeling in this timeline. All his "feeling" is in the other timeline.
Sun has gotten a little bleedthrough back, causing her to forget how to speak English.
But that might be the sacrifice the island is demanding--that Desmond choose the other timeline, let himself cross over.
But each lostie may end up having to choose which timeline to commit to.
But they "lose" some of their self in one timeline or the other as they become more invested or something in one or the other.
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I know it doesn't seem like that. He seems more "happy" than Sayid-like. I'm more just tossing it out there.
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quote:n my theory, the bomb just serves to flash them to 2007, and has no relationship with altTime beyond the fact that it enabled it to happen by flashing the Losties back to 2007, thus allowing for the events of this season on Island, which somehow lead to the existence of altTime.
WHY does the bomb transport them back, and nothing else? Why doesn't it, for instance, KILL THEM?
The conversation got a bit heated, but I don't see how it distracts from the awesomeness of the episode. Nothing BUT such an amazing episode could have produced this kind of passionate debate.
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Strider Argument (indented for easy skipping for the people who don't care that much)
If the altTime is nothing but a matrix illusion, then why is it DESMOND of all people who is able to access it? I can't see how they could possibly set that up and then have it turn out to be an elaborate red herring. People predicted Desmond would be able to access altTime from the beginning of Season 6, because it followed logically from the ruptured timeline premise. Desmond is now able to travel between timelines. We know this as certainly as we know anything about the Lostverse. For that to just be coincidences strains credibility. Eloise's "whatever happened, happened" line pales in significance. We've had several lines that got repeated a lot ("Don't tell me what I can't do") that weren't significant because they told us about the plot, they were significant because they added depth to the character arcs. More on this below.
This is the final season. Assuming the storytelling is good, now is when all the elements we have been show from the entire show should be coming together to form a satisfying whole, that we either see coming or go "ah, should have seen that coming!" when it happens. Now is not the time to have an entire season's worth of red herrings just to have it turn out to be a dream at the end.
The part of Strider's theory that I think IS accurate is that the altTime is a kind of trap. It's not an illusion, but it's a carefully constructed universe set in motion by Eloise. The bomb was just part of it.Possibly in allegiance with Smokey... I'm not willing to commit to anything there because there's zero evidence. But I would not be surprised if Eloise turned out to be the Big Bad™ at the end.
In season 5, towards the end, Faraday is talking about "whatever happened, happened" theory that it only makes sense if you assume that people always make the same choices. Generally speaking, people DO always make the same choices because people have particular personalities and will do the same thing in the same situation. But if free will exists (and despite the fact that I think free will is nonsensical, I don't expect a TV show to claim that it doesn't), there is always the chance that one of the variables in the equation (i.e. people) will choose something different.
Couple that with Jacob/Esau's line:
"It always ends the same." "It only ends once. Everything else is progress."
Eloise is the one who told Desmond you can't change fate. She obviously had good reason to believe she's right. But by trying to save Charlie, he eventually kept him alive long enough to make a pretty big difference. She's the one saying "Whatever happened, happened." I bet Faraday believed that for so long largely due to her influence. I think the show is setting her up to be extremely Right™, but at a higher level than we are here-to-fore aware of, or extremely wrong, and therefore one of the final masterminds the characters have to deal with. I am leaning towards the latter right now, and I think that her "Whatever happened, happened" was merely her reassuring herself that everything was going according to plan.
And then Desmond is like "hey who's Penny?" And she's like "Oh f#@#$."
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Raymond, I can't answer your question about why Desmond, because I don't really have any specific theories regarding the mechanism of how this "illusion" if you want to call it that works. I do know that Desmond has a very significant connection to electromagnetism, and I was right there with the first people who proposed the Desmond as time line jumper theory(especially as it fit in nicely with my theory of Juliet accessing her altTime consciousness).
quote:This is the final season. Assuming the storytelling is good, now is when all the elements we have been show from the entire show should be coming together to form a satisfying whole. Now is not the time to have an entire season's worth of red herrings just to have it turn out to be a dream at the end.
I would also say that a season's worth of a completely new plot element(altTime), is just as bad as a season's worth of red herrings when what we want are answers and resolution.
quote:It's not an illusion, but it's a carefully constructed universe set in motion by Eloise.
What's the difference between an illusion and a carefully constructed universe? Isn't that sort of semantic?
quote:In season 5, towards the end, Faraday is talking about "whatever happened, happened" theory that it only makes sense if you assume that people always make the same choices. Generally speaking, people DO always make the same choices because people have particular personalities and will do the same thing in the same situation. But if free will exists (and despite the fact that I think free will is nonsensical, I don't expect a TV show to claim that it doesn't), there is always the chance that one of the variables in the equation (i.e. people) will choose something different.
I question your use of "choose something different". This is fundamentally where the divide comes down with a lot of us. Some people seem to look at events as having a first time through, where the characters chose one thing, and then do to time travel, a second time through where things can change. I don't see it that way. These characters chose their actions once and only once. There is nothing to change. It is only a trick of how we as viewers are told the story that makes it seem like things can change. This is what I keep saying about free will and choice able to exist within a deterministic settings(like how religious folk say that we have free will yet God knows what we're going to do). These characters make free choices, which are important, and affect others around them, and have meaning, but still fit within a setting where the story can only go one way.
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quote:I would also say that a season's worth of a completely new plot element(altTime), is just as bad as a season's worth of red herrings when what we want are answers and resolution.
quote:What's the difference between an illusion and a carefully constructed universe? Isn't that sort of semantic?
altTime is something that follows logically out of time travel. It's a perfectly valid idea on how time travel could actually work. A carefully constructed universe might be functionally similar to a dream, but one of them follows rules and hints the show has already established, the other is something completely new that doesn't follow any rules at all. If you considered altTime and dream to be a semantic difference, I don't think we'd be having the argument in the first place. A carefully constructed universe violates "Whatever happened happened" which is the theory you want to maintain in the first place.
Also, introducing one final plot element (especially when it's a variation of earlier plot elements) at the BEGINNING of the last season is very different from introducing an unrelated plot element at the very end of the show.
quote:I question your use of "choose something different"
Bear in mind that I DON'T believe in free will at all. I'm am merely repeating what Faraday himself already said. In addition to Faraday saying "we are the variables, we have free will," there's the fact that people in general like to believe in free will and television usually ends up playing into that. Most people would consider an ending without free will to be a depressing ending. I'd actually love it if there was a show that ended up showcasing that free will is an illusion, but the chances of that happening here (or any other given show) are slim.
It is certainly possible Faraday is wrong, but then essentially the show ended a year ago and we have two seasons that are not only built entirely of red herrings, but are effectively a waste of time.
On top of all the meta-storytelling-analysis, I frankly just don't think "whatever happened, happened," makes intellectual sense. The only time travel story I've seen that actually made sense was Pastwatch. Causality was pretty straightforward - you go back in time. Then you exist back in time, and can do whatever you want, erasing the previous iteration of events. "You can only make choices that will, millions of events later, turn out to produce a specific outcome" is an extremely arbitrary rule in comparison. I get that in WWH theory there's only one fixed universe as opposed to an endlessly cycling one, but that doesn't make it any more sensical to me.
I think Lost is going to be more like most Time Travel stories, that involve a few cutesy paradoxes that don't actually make sense and I'm just going to have to ignore them. But the WHH theory makes that worse, not better.
[ April 08, 2010, 02:01 AM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: Rabbit, I don't think it's bad story telling to introduce plot points that are enacted by characters who are wrong.
Its only bad story telling if the author doesn't have purpose for doing it beyond misleading the reader.
quote:Or to show us things that are deceiving or ambiguous to keep us guessing about the true nature of things.
Once again, whether or not this is bad story telling depends on whether it fits and serves some purpose in the broader picture.
Its bad story telling to introduce a lot of stuff that's ultimately irrelevant to the central story.
I think that's why people disliked the Nicki and Paolo episode so much. There is nothing wrong with it as a stand alone story. The problem is that it was was totally irrelevant(at least thus far) to the bigger story. Its not good story telling to include a lot of stuff that's irrelevant to the story. And while I don't expect every single bit to be part of the larger puzzle, the bomb, the alt-time line and the question of whether the Losties choices make any difference aren't little bits or isolated episodes in an early season.
I don't see any problem with the alt-time line being more than it seems, or the bomb being only part of story. But if they turn out to be irrelevant or some cheap trick (which seems to be your theory), it is indeed bad story telling.
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quote:n my theory, the bomb just serves to flash them to 2007, and has no relationship with altTime beyond the fact that it enabled it to happen by flashing the Losties back to 2007, thus allowing for the events of this season on Island, which somehow lead to the existence of altTime.
WHY does the bomb transport them back, and nothing else? Why doesn't it, for instance, KILL THEM?
The conversation got a bit heated, but I don't see how it distracts from the awesomeness of the episode. Nothing BUT such an amazing episode could have produced this kind of passionate debate.
It only distracts from the awesomeness in the sense that I've been a big proponent of this theory from the beginning(i checked and I offered the altTime as epilogue hypothesis right after episode 1) and it has not served to change anyone's mind as of yet. To me, the events of the last few episodes just further serve to confirm and direct that theory, but obviously they haven't been interpreted by others in the same way! I don't mind talking about all this and debating it, and I don't mind being in the minority, but there reaches a point where I can't say anything new! This isn't a slight at anyone, just that in a very practical sense this conversation is turning into a distraction from other Lost related conversation. That said...
Raymond said:
quote:On top of all the meta-storytelling-analysis, I frankly just don't think "whatever happened, happened," makes intellectual sense.
ahhh...well here it is. I happen to think that whatever happened, happened is the only kind of time travel story that DOES make intellectual sense. so following from that, altTime is no way the logical outcome of these events.
You guys keep drawing on Faraday's conversations to back up that things can change, and say to have it not work out that way would be contradicting everything he said and hokie and all that. But even Faraday's own stance is a TOTAL contradiction to what he spent many episodes drilling into our heads. Was it hokie or a waste of time that Lost decided to have Faraday change his mind?
Faraday in altTime isn't all knowing, he's struggling with the truth as much as anyone else. Why should I take anything he says on authority. He remembers a nuke and thinks it was important and has something to do with where they all are now. That's great. He's confused. He only grasps part of the truth.
I really don't understand why altTime as not a "real parallel universe" would be hokie. Just think about some of the sources Lost has drawn from and been inspired by. Phillip K. Dick, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz. Do you see a common theme throughout them? Were they all hokey or a waste of time? Whether you want to call them illusions or fantasy worlds IS semantic to me. They are not the REAL world. And whatever the mechanism that created altTime, all i am saying is that it is NOT an alternate time line created from the nuke being set off.
Okay, some new thoughts. I was thinking about the new importance of love in this past episode as being the thing that causes these characters to start questioning the nature of this world they find themselves in(Faraday-Charlotte, Desmond-Penny, Charlie-Claire). I, obviously, think this fits in nicely with my Esau as creator of altTime theory. Esau believes in the corruptibility of man, and was somehow able to corrupt them into agreeing to live in this universe. Well, love can be viewed as one of the most potent forces to battle it (real love, not love of money or something like that). And so it's love that ends up helping these characters see through the facade of the world they're living in. I'm even starting to think that this is why Jacob spent so much time bringing all these characters together and criss crossing all their paths. Like Jacob has been working to connect everyone in this web of empathy and love and friendship so that their memories and connections could protect them against, or help them to get out, of this fake world.
Or something along those lines. Haven't thought it all through yet. But Eloise's comments about "someone has affected the way you see things. this is a problem. it is, in fact, a violation." and her questioning of why Desmond is causing trouble because he "has everything he wants" very much leads me to believe that this world is a facade, created for a very specific purpose. It is surface happiness, but not real happiness. Or simply just not real, and these characters are starting to realize it.
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quote:But even Faraday's own stance is a TOTAL contradiction to what he spent many episodes drilling into our heads. Was it hokie or a waste of time that Lost decided to have Faraday change his mind?
I actually did think it was a little hokie then, mostly because Faraday was like "oh snap, I totally forgot about Free Will™! That changes EVERYTHING!!" And I was like "... you never thought to consider that in your 20 someodd years of research? Seriously?" If he had come up with a reason for WHH theory to change that was cleverer and the sort of thing he shouldn't have already considered, I'd have had less problem with it.
because those episodes built up one particular set of rules which were then subverted.
quote:I happen to think that whatever happened, happened is the only kind of time travel story that DOES make intellectual sense.
I know you've attempted to explain this before, but seriously I do not get it. Is there a link you can provide to any kind of actual scientific backing here, or is this just something that happens to click for you? Because in terms of logical-coherence, Pastwatch time travel really works just fine.
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quote:But even Faraday's own stance is a TOTAL contradiction to what he spent many episodes drilling into our heads. Was it hokie or a waste of time that Lost decided to have Faraday change his mind?
I actually did think it was a little hokie then, mostly because Faraday was like "oh snap, I totally forgot about Free Will™! That changes EVERYTHING!!" And I was like "... you never thought to consider that in your 20 someodd years of research? Seriously?" If he had come up with a reason for WHH theory to change that was cleverer and the sort of thing he shouldn't have already considered, I'd have had less problem with it.
But in either case, it is even MORE Hokie for the brilliant physicist to go "Oh snap I forgot free will!" and build this entire climax around it... and go "oh wait nevermind my bad."
As for Wizard of Oz and what-not... I'm not familiar with all of those, but most of them are less hokie because they didn't deliberately build themselves up as a mystery to be solved rather than as a random adventure. And as far as philosophical references go... those are nice for adding depth to a story, but if you're actually going to make them a key part of the mythology you need to include them in the main story for general audiences to understand.
And again... seriously, Desmond. Faraday could easily have been wrong and I have no attachment to any of his theories. But Desmond clearly points to your theory being wrong and I don't get how you can ignore that.
quote:I happen to think that whatever happened, happened is the only kind of time travel story that DOES make intellectual sense.
I know you've attempted to explain this before, but I do not get it in the slightest. Is there a link you can provide to any kind of actual scientific backing here, or is this just something that happens to click for you? Because in terms of logical-coherence, Pastwatch time travel really works just fine.
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quote:But Eloise's comments about "someone has affected the way you see things. this is a problem. it is, in fact, a violation." and her questioning of why Desmond is causing trouble because he "has everything he wants" very much leads me to believe that this world is a facade, created for a very specific purpose. It is surface happiness, but not real happiness. Or simply just not real, and these characters are starting to realize it.
I know you said you're just tinkering with ideas, but many of the main characters do have a "real" happiness in altworld, aka Locke and Helen, Jack and his son, etc. We've seen them sacrifice in different ways and also come to terms with real, deep-seated issues that were a looooong time in being resolved -- many people here have commented on how content the various characters seem, and how nice it is to see them coming to terms with their limitations and issues...not everything is pat and perfect, as a Fake Made Up World would suggest(e.g. Sayid doesn't have Nadia, Kate is on the run, Sawyer is still held up on his parents) -- so even if it Does turn out that this was a chosen, constructed timeline, I don't think it's going to hinge on the fact that the characters aren't experiencing real change or real happiness.
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Raymond, can you explain what is it about Desmond that invalidates my theory? I'm not seeing it. Desmond has traveled back in time(maybe) when he bought the ring from Ms. Hawking. He's consciousness jumped back and forth between two times in The Constant. What about this last episode was so different from that. If I'm right, and altTime isn't an alternate time line, but a fake reality, then the question can be "when" is it happening, and if that's the question, there's nothing stopping Desmond from jumping back and forth to it the same way he did in The Constant.
quote:I know you've attempted to explain this before, but I do not get it in the slightest. Is there a link you can provide to any kind of actual scientific backing here, or is this just something that happens to click for you? Because in terms of logical-coherence, Pastwatch time travel really works just fine.
I don't know if this a particularly fair question to ask me! If I asked you to provide scientific backing for alternate time line scenarios of time travel, would you be able to do it?
I've read a lot of different time travel stories, all of which used many different theories of how time travel works. The whatever happened, happened style really hit home with me when I read The Time Travelers Wife. Which, btw, if you haven't read, is a really amazing book, I know many people at Hatrack have read it and I'm sure most would recommend it. The whole story revolves around a whatever happened, happened approach to time travel. One time line. No multiple times through. No changing things. And it just made absolutely perfect sense to me.
I can also point you to The Constant episode and pretty much all of Season 5. Every action and event and yes...choice...that took place in season 5 conformed to a whatever happened, happened theory of time travel. The only exceptions are (possibly) when Faraday knocks on the hatch and talks to Desmond, and the nuke. But neither of those are confirmed. The Desmond meeting is odd, but nothing has been stated definitely as to whether that changed something. Yes, there is a huge glaring question of why Desmond didn't remember Faraday after this event in WHH, and I have no real good answer for that. But the alternative is just as ridiculous. Faraday inserted a memory into Desmond's head in Faradays subjective 2004(just a few hours after time jumping began), and in Desmond's 2001-2004 while he was on the Island alone. Why would this event insert a memory into Desmond's head at some random time in 2007? It doesn't make sense...there's no correlation between those time periods. So both alternatives, that Desmond forgot and suddenly remembered 3-5 years later during a dream or that the memory just planted itself in his head at this completely random time unrelated to anything, are lacking. But i prefer the "he forgot" as the lesser of two evils. The nuke is I think still up in the air. Until we really know 100% the true nature of altTime, none of us can definitely say whether the nuke was a change. I think it wasn't obviously. Most of you think it was.
But besides these two examples, every single event we saw in season 5 conformed to whatever happened happened. Charlotte talked about Faraday warning her as a child, then he time traveled and did it. Richard gave Locke a compass and then later we saw a time traveling Locke give it to Richard in the 50s. The existence of Adam and Eve (the skeletons in the cave), which hasn't really been definitely answered for us, but most people think it's likely that they're time travelling Losties, my theory has been Rose and Bernard (the presence of the skeletons when the Losties first land implies that their time traveling, and subsequent deaths always occured), Cheng had a prosthetic arm in at least one orientation video and in The Incident we watched his hand get destroyed. These are all events that conformed to plot elements we had already been privy too, and finally gave us the explanation for how they happened.
But there's more. There are countless times during season 5 where the action could have blatantly broken WHH. Sayid could have succeeded in killing Ben. When Sawyer came upon Kate helping Claire give birth he could have interacted with them, thus creating an event we know is different from the first time we saw it(i'm refraining from saying "first time through" because there was no first time through. the first time through Sawyer WAS there, we just didn't see him). Jin could have not stopped Rousseau from going down into The Temple, thus getting her infected. At ANY point any number of characters could have been killed that we know were alive longer, they could have killed Cheng or Radzinsky, Ben's father or Horace. Any of these events would have obviously contradicted WHH, because they would have contradicted story that had already been shown to us, but none of them ever happened. But I think the former paragraph is really the better paragraph at explaining WHH, given that it involved knowledge we had in previous seasons or episodes, that came to fruition through time traveling. Their actions CAUSED events we knew were part of history. It's important to note, that at each and every point along the way characters used their free will to make choices. The time traveling Losties didn't know what was going to happen, they had never subjectively gone through those events, only we as viewers knew what would happen, or were able to predict it due to the nature of WHH(and if you look through last year's threads you'll see my point). The setting was deterministic, but the choices were free. It's just the nature of how we were told this story, and the unusual way cause and effect work when introducing time travel that makes it seem like they should be able to "change" something. there's nothing to "change" because there was never a first time through when the time travelers weren't there.
Why this event with the nuke should be different than every other moment in season 5 is beyond me (yes, i know the theory espoused by Faraday that small pebbles don't make a difference but a big boulder can split the stream).
Here's some stuff I found on wikipedia:
quote:A predestination paradox (also called causal loop, causality loop, and (less frequently) closed loop or closed time loop) is a paradox of time travel that is often used as a convention in science fiction. It exists when a time traveller is caught in a loop of events that "predestines" or "predates" them to travel back in time. Because of the possibility of influencing the past while time traveling, one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened must happen. A time traveler attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fulfilling their role in creating history as we know it, not changing it. Or that the time-traveler's personal knowledge of history already includes their future travels to their own experience of the past.
In layman's terms, it means this: the time traveller is in the past, which means they were in the past before. Therefore, their presence is vital to the future, and they do something that causes the future to occur in the same way that their knowledge of the future has already happened. It is very closely related to the ontological paradox and usually occurs at the same time.
There are a whole load of typical examples of this in action, one of them is even from Lost! But it includes many others.
Someone, maybe it was you, asked about Desmond's visions and saving Charlie. So I should address that too. When Desmond sees his flashes, and acts to save Charlie's life is he "changing" the future? I would argue no. His actions could really only be said to change the future if we had seen Charlie actually die in a scene where Desmond wasn't able to see the future, and then we saw that same scene again with Desmond saving Charlie. Then yes...Desmond changed something. But since these possible futures only exist in Desmond's mind, he acts to prevent a "possible" future from happening. I think Jacob acts in a similar vain btw. WHH and the idea of course correcting don't have to be mutually exclusive.
That's all I got in me. Hope it clears up my support for WHH.
quote:But Eloise's comments about "someone has affected the way you see things. this is a problem. it is, in fact, a violation." and her questioning of why Desmond is causing trouble because he "has everything he wants" very much leads me to believe that this world is a facade, created for a very specific purpose. It is surface happiness, but not real happiness. Or simply just not real, and these characters are starting to realize it.
I know you said you're just tinkering with ideas, but many of the main characters do have a "real" happiness in altworld, aka Locke and Helen, Jack and his son, etc. We've seen them sacrifice in different ways and also come to terms with real, deep-seated issues that were a looooong time in being resolved -- many people here have commented on how content the various characters seem, and how nice it is to see them coming to terms with their limitations and issues...not everything is pat and perfect, as a Fake Made Up World would suggest(e.g. Sayid doesn't have Nadia, Kate is on the run, Sawyer is still held up on his parents) -- so even if it Does turn out that this was a chosen, constructed timeline, I don't think it's going to hinge on the fact that the characters aren't experiencing real change or real happiness.
Fair point Leonide. I was even one of the first people to mention that some characters seem to be learning very valuable lessons that they never learned on the Island. I'm not sure how it all fits in!
I do rattle off a lot of theories, and while all of them can't be right, I do have a pretty good track record. I think my prediction of Locke being the Smoke Monster came pretty early on last season! Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Raymond, can you explain what is it about Desmond that invalidates my theory? I'm not seeing it
The Desmond issue doesn't NECESSARILY prove that WHH is wrong. But it proves pretty conclusively that altTime is a real universe that Desmond travels to the same way he always does when jumping through time. This semantic difference IS important. If altTime is "a carefully constructed universe" as opposed to an illusion, that has implications on what timeTravel/universeModel we're using. It's one in which alternate versions of reality can exist, one way or another. You mention something about not knowing "when" the altTime is, I guess implying that it could be in the far future or past, with the entire Oceanic Flight perfectly recreated. I guess that's possible, but it seems pretty ludicrous to me. Alternate universe is by far the most obvious and likely explanation, and if alternate universes can exist then the entire elegance of the WWH universe (a single, 4 dimensional universe that doesn't change) is thrown out the window and I'm not sure why you'd still find it more appealing than other time travel theories.
quote:If I asked you to provide scientific backing for alternate time line scenarios of time travel, would you be able to do it?
No, but I am not claiming that any particular variation of time travel is more intellectually sound than any other. I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a version of time travel that just appeals to you more than others, but to claim that it is an intellectual appeal as opposed to an emotional one is (at least partially) inaccurate.
Now, Lost clearly HAS done a lot to suggest that WWH is the norm. 90% of season 5 reinforces that. But the remaining 10% just as clearly suggest the opposite. It is definitely still up in the air. Even altTime does nothing to suggest that the original timeline is not still a WHH universe. It may be that the nuke was nothing but the "Incident," but that Incident always has and always will also produce the altTime universe. But so far the most recent stuff we've seen pretty clearly suggests a mutable/divergent timeline and I think if'd behoove you to look for ways to accept that as possibility that you can actually be happy with.
I'd like to clarify that I would NOT be disappointed if WHH turned out to be correct, just with a final resolution we haven't seen yet (the theory I listed above seems fairly workable). But I would be very disappointed if the altTime turned out to be a dream.
[ April 09, 2010, 12:20 AM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
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Raymond, what if I called altTime a carefully constructed universe...constructed by Esau. Would that change the way you're viewing it?
quote:I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a version of time travel that just appeals to you more than others, but to claim that it is an intellectual appeal as opposed to an emotional one is (at least partially) inaccurate.
Sure, and we can have a whole separate conversation about the relationship between intellect and emotions, and our ability to use logic separated from emotions(i even wrote a paper on this!)...but it's worth saying that I was originally very against the idea of WHH. Leonide may or may not remember this, but when I first started reading The Time Traveler's Wife, I was really put off by the idea, found it implausible.* But as the book went on the idea just made so much sense. Now, i'm not saying this is the way time travel actually works. I'm saying that Lost has espoused this idea. And that the only plot point since time travel got brought into the story, that may violate this rule, is an elaborate ruse by the creators. They've done it before.
*I love that we're arguing about time travel.
quote:It is definitely still up in the air. Even altTime does nothing to suggest that the original timeline is not still a WHH universe. It may be that the nuke was nothing but the "Incident," but that Incident always has and always will also produce the altTime universe.
That's actually an interesting point that I had never thought of before. I'll think that one over, but I'm inclined to say it won't change my mind.
quote:But so far the most recent stuff we've seen pretty clearly suggests a mutable/divergent timeline and I think you're better off looking for ways to accept that as possibility that you can actually be happy with.
I hope you haven't taken any of this conversation the wrong way, I'm LOVING this season of Lost. And even if I'm wrong, I'll be happy. I have faith that the creators of this show know what the're doing. They've been too smart all along. And I know they're on the ball because I've read quotes from them that are heartening, that show they know what's going on.
quote: LINDELOF: Right out of the gate, in the first five minutes of the premiere, you get hit over the head with two things that you’re not expecting. The first is that Desmond is on the plane. The second thing that we do is we drop out of the plane and we go below the water and we see that the Island is submerged. What we’re trying to do there is basically say to you, “God bless the survivors of Oceanic 815, because they’re so self-centered, they thought the only effect [of detonating the bomb] was going to be that their plane never crashes.” But they don’t stop to think, “If we do this in 1977, what else is going to affected by this?” So that their entire lives can be changed radically. In fact, it would appear that they’ve sunken the Island. That’s our way of saying, “Keep your eyes peeled for the differences that you’re not expecting.” Some of these characters were still in Australia, but some weren’t. Shannon’s not there. Boone actually says that he tried to get her back. There are all sorts of other people that we don’t see. Where’s Libby? Where’s Ana Lucia? Where’s Eko? These are all the things that you’re supposed to be thinking about. When our characters posited the “What if?” scenario, they neglected to think about what the other effects of potentially changing time might be and we’re embracing those things.
That said, are you saying definitively that detonating Jughead was the event that created this new timeline? Or is that a mystery which the season 6 story will reveal? LINDELOF: It’s a mystery. A big one.
quote:Is there a relationship between Island reality and sideways reality? Will they run parallel for the remainder of the season? Will they fuse together? Might one fade away? LINDELOF: For us, the big risk that we’re taking in the final season of the show is basically this very question. This is the critical mystery of the season, which is, “What is the relationship between these two shows?” And we don’t use the phrase “alternate reality,” because to call one of them an “alternate reality” is to infer that one of them isn’t real, or one of them is real and the other is the alternate to being real. CUSE: But the questions you’re asking are exactly the right questions. What are we to make of the fact that they’re showing us two different timelines? Are they going to resolve? Are they going to connect? Are they going to co-exist in parallel fashion? Are they going to cross? Do they intersect? Does one prove to be viable and the other one not? I think those are all the kind of speculations that are the right speculations to be having at this point in the season.
quote:Did Jughead really sink the Island? And is it possible that the Sideways characters are now caught in a time loop in which they might have to go back in time and fulfill the obligation to continuity by detonating the bomb? LINDELOF: These questions will be dealt with on the show. Should you infer that the detonation of Jughead is what sunk the island? Who knows? But there’s the Foot. What do you get when you see that shot? It looks like New Otherton got built. These little clues [might help you] extrapolate when the Island may have sunk. Start to think about it.
My theory may not be right, but these statements tell me these guys know what the important questions are and have thought of ways to answer them in a satisfactory manner!
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Those are very encouraging interviews. I've had faith in Lost ever since the end of Season 2, when the Hatch was revealed to be the cause of the crash. But this is nice to know.
quote:I hope you haven't taken any of this conversation the wrong way, I'm LOVING this season of Lost. And even if I'm wrong, I'll be happy. I have faith that the creators of this show know what the're doing. They've been too smart all along. And I know they're on the ball because I've read quotes from them that are heartening, that show they know what's going on.
In that case all the power to you. You mentioned earlier that a non-WHH solution would make you "profoundly unhappy," which was what I was worried about.
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Let me turn some of this on it's head and get some answers from those that espouse the "altTime was created by the nuke" theory. I've been on the defensive with my theory, but I think there are some pretty significant things that need to be answered from your end.
Why would a nuke bury an Island underwater?
Why does Jack have that cut on his neck in LA X, on the plane?
Why do these characters seem to have dejavu of their other lives? If this is a *real* separate time line created when the nuke went off, these characters should have absolutely no access or connection to their other selves.
I mean...in a universe where they never crash on the Island, they're also not there to set off the nuke in 1977.* They're supposed to now be in a universe where none of that ever happened, and they grew up normal and had nothing to do with some other universe. So why the connections?
*Which just begs the question, if they weren't there to set off the nuke, wouldn't Desmond still come, and they still crash land? It's questions like this that make multiple time lines and changing things not make sense to me.
Why does Jack not remember getting his appendix out? hmmm...almost like a false history was given to him.
I'm sure I have others. But I'm spent. And been thinking about Lost too much now!
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quote:In that case all the power to you. You mentioned earlier that a non-WHH solution would make you "profoundly unhappy," which was what I was worried about.
I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be somewhat disappointed. But I can be disappointed and really happy and entertained at the same time. I loved almost every bit of last season, and yet still went off some of the ontological paradoxes that were created at a few points.
[start matrix tangent]I'll use the Matrix movies as an example. I absolutely adore the first Matrix. But I still REALLY enjoy the next two movies. I'll rewatch them happily and think they have a lot of really awesome aspects, and a satisfying ending. But I still criticize them for what I see as a lack of vision with what they could've done. They could have made better movies. Personally, I think they should've combined the two and trimmed the fat. Two had some great philosophy and conversations I thought, but the action was boring. I wasn't worried for the characters(now that Neo's invincible) and they artificially limited what he should've been able to do. Three had some great action (now that it was brought to the "real world" it felt more immediate and more engaging and I worried for the characters) and closed up the story really well I thought, but easily could've been cut shorter two combine the two movies. I can criticize it to no end, yet I'll still unabashedly say I love it. Skill or flaw? You be the judge[/end matrix tangent]
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I do not believe the nuke is solely responsible for the island sinking. (I think there's pretty solid evidence that that is impossible, and the interviews you just listed confirm we are supposed to be looking at that evidence and analyzing it, not hand-waving it as a continuity error). I believe the nuke/energy-pocket collectively provided the energy required to fork the timeline, but that the actual forking of that timeline requires a large number of manipulations that were executed by Eloise.
quote:I mean...in a universe where they never crash on the Island, they're also not there to set off the nuke in 1977.* They're supposed to now be in a universe where none of that ever happened, and they grew up normal and had nothing to do with some other universe. So why the connections?
Well, this actually isn't necessary to worry about because I believe there were a variety of forces at work, and all that was needed to produce the altTime was the nuke/pocket coinciding in one universe. Once that happened, the second universe existed, period.
But even ignoring that possibility, if we were seeing a universe where the timeline went:
1960ish? - Dharma comes to the island 1970ish - Losties appear on the island via time travel 1970-something - Losties cause the nuke, which somehow sinks the island. 1980-present, things procede normally after the destruction of the island.
The fact that there were never a new group of Losties to go back in time and cause the nuke is IRRELEVANT. In this version of the universe, the Losties appeared in the past. Once they appeared in the past, they were in the past. Period. There is no reason to assume that people are contingent on causes when time travel is involved. (Have you read Pastwatch? It seriously is a good book that explains this pretty well).
Now, there are several reasons why the above doesn't necessarily make sense in the Lost universe. A) we know enough things that couldn't possibly have been changed ONLY by the island sinking, and we know the island didn't sink at the time of the nuke. B) We've gotten some pretty clear hints that the Lostverse doesn't quite work like that. There was a theory a while back that I liked that the island's inherent nature included a means to correct paradoxes, and the reason everyone had all these weird connections was because the special-nature of the island warped time to produce a set of events that would resolve a particular paradox.
That ended up not being so likely, now that we know Jacob was responsible for most of their connections. But we've still seen in Desmond that the timeline has a somewhat self correcting mechanism (i.e. Charlie eventually dies no matter what).
There's a terminator novel with a section describing timelines having "inertia," and multiple timelines being superimposed on each other until they finally resolved themselves. It was a pretty good explanation that I think is similar to how they're handling Lost. I'm trying to find the paragraph in question (I saw it linked online once, not sure if I can find it again).
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I'd say that you're not necessarily in the majority with how you view these events.
Yes, one explanation is that the time traveling Losties were on the Island before the nuke. Which means they were their in the 50s. They were there in that random time when they saw the statue, and they were there in 1977 and set off the nuke and the two time lines diverged at that point.
An EQUALLY valid theory is that since the Losties never landed, they also couldn't be present during all these other times on the Island. This theory at least goes some way toward explaining why there are other differences. For instance, Ben's dad in altTime said something about how they should have stayed on the Island. Which is a weird thing to say about an Island that you left because a nuke went off on.
Anyway, I've seen people put forth both scenarios.
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quote: "The Desmond issue doesn't NECESSARILY prove that WHH is wrong. But it proves pretty conclusively that altTime is a real universe that Desmond travels to the same way he always does when jumping through time."
This part I disagree with. Most of the other things I don't really have a solid opinion on, but I see no reason to think that Desmond "travels" anywhere at all. When he was jumping around in time, it was an issue with him not having a constant. He wasn't anchored, and was drifting.
What happened here was electromagnetism. Last time he was exposed to that, he didn't hop around in time, he had visions of the future. Why assume that anything different is happening now? When he was in the alternate time line, he didn't appear to have any more memory of the original time line than any other character. It seemed to me more like he was just observing his alt-self. Which implied to me that the alternate universe is something that will happen in his relative "future".
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Can't wait to find out who's right...if anybody.
And, I can't believe I watched this show for 6 seasons just to leave for boot camp and miss the last 5 episodes. LOL
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"Sir, I was hoping to wait a little bit on serving my country... I kinda need to finish Lost." lol
quote:When he was in the alternate time line, he didn't appear to have any more memory of the original time line than any other character.
He didn't UNTIL the moment he faints in front of Penny. Afterwards he's suddenly all "let's get this list and mess with some people's lives." I don't know if they have a good reason for why it was that moment where they synced up with each other (similar to how I don't think they have a good reason for Desmond suddenly remembering that message years later). But all of Desmond's abilities have always revolved around temporal leaping ("vision of the future" and "suddenly living in a different stage of time until you randomly are back" are effectively identical).
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quote: He didn't UNTIL the moment he faints in front of Penny. Afterwards he's suddenly all "let's get this list and mess with some people's lives." I don't know if they have a good reason for why it was that moment where they synced up with each other (similar to how I don't think they have a good reason for Desmond suddenly remembering that message years later). But all of Desmond's abilities have always revolved around temporal leaping ("vision of the future" and "suddenly living in a different stage of time until you randomly are back" are effectively identical).
I still don't see how that implies that it was anything other than a vision. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing for alt-Desmond to do with the information he had. Actually I think it proves that "real" Desmond wasn't in control. Why would he need to see the names of everybody on the plane, he already knows all of them? Alt-Desmond seemed to be in exactly the same situation as every other alt character. They all seem to be able to unlock some amount of "memory", Desmond could have just gotten more by actually meeting Penny.
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altTime characters are implied to have all gotten visions, but Desmond a) seems implied to have gotten more information (and not just because he met Penny - other people met their realLovers and didn't get anything other than flashes from realTime. For that matter, Penny didn't flash in the way Desmond did) B) Desmond so far is the only character other than Juliet to have, in realTime, gotten a vision of altTime. (And Juliet was right next to the nuke/energy pocket, so it makes sense for her to have gotten something similar).
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I don't think J-Put is arguing it wasn't caused by the electromagnetism, just questioning the nature of what happened. I think it's a valid question.
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My point is so far, we have only seen electromagnetism cause phenomena related to timeline distortion, so it makes sense to assume that if it can cause people to interact with altTime, there is some kind of timeline issue at work.
I guess (and maybe this is what you were trying to say earlier) that if everyone enters MatrixTime at a particular point in the future that electromagnetism could bring people in touch with their future, enMatrixed selves... I dunno. Maybe. But so far there is really zero evidence of that.
Of, also:
quote:An EQUALLY valid theory is that since the Losties never landed, they also couldn't be present during all these other times on the Island. This theory at least goes some way toward explaining why there are other differences. For instance, Ben's dad in altTime said something about how they should have stayed on the Island. Which is a weird thing to say about an Island that you left because a nuke went off on.
I actually think that this IS the likely scenario. I had a disclaimer saying my scenario wasn't accurate because we knew certain things about it (such as when the island sunk) that couldn't be true. I was just saying your question of Grandfather-paradox-ism wasn't a question that necessarily needed answering.
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quote:Raymond, what if I called altTime a carefully constructed universe...constructed by Esau. Would that change the way you're viewing it?
It might... but right now the only evidence we have is that it was constructed or heavily influenced by Eloise. I'm going to hold off on speculating here until we get any evidence one way or another about Eloise' relationship with smokey.
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quote:I guess (and maybe this is what you were trying to say earlier) that if everyone enters MatrixTime at a particular point in the future that electromagnetism could bring people in touch with their future, enMatrixed selves... I dunno. Maybe. But so far there is really zero evidence of that.
I would say its less that zero evidence. That theory doesn't fit with the fact that the island, complete with Dharma buildings and shark, is underwater in the alt-time. There is no reason the island would be enMatrix and since no one on the plane saw the island underwater, there is no easy explanation for having an underwater island in the Matrix.
I don't think the bomb caused the time shift to 2007 theory fits the data either. If it was the bomb, why did it shift all the Losties to 2007, (including those that were at the bomb site and those that were not) but none of the Dharma people.
I think Jacob brought them to the future at the instant before the bomb went offer, so they are in a future where the bomb didn't detonate. Alt-time is the time-line where the bomb did detonate. I'm probably wrong, but at least it fits the data.
The primary thing we know about the time shifts is that they are selective. Only select people started to time jump when Ben turned the wheel (Richard and the others did not). Only select people from the second plane got transported back in time. Only select people from the the incident got transport to 2007. That suggests to me that someone (either Esau or Jacob) is controlling the time travel, it isn't simply exposure to EM that does it.
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Rabbit, I'd like to see some of my questions from above addressed. I fully admit there are problems with my theory. I don't have all the info. But I see just as many problems with yours. To say that I have less than zero evidence for anything I'm proposing is to ignore every one of the posts I made on this page; pointing out the problems with altTime, and discussing how things like the deja-vu, and the mirrors, and even Jacob's bringing together all of these characters can fit into my theory. There does seem to be very much a monkey's paw type of effect in altTime. Desmond has Widmore's respect, but lost Penny, Charlie is alive but never had Claire, Locke has a good relationship with his dad, but is still wheelchair bound, Nadia is alive, but married to someone else, etc...
Anyway, to ignore all the problems I bring up about altTime, and focus only on the problems with my theory is disingenuous. I also think that many of the side points I'm bringing up are very valid, and even if the crux of my theory turns out to be incorrect, I don't think you should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
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Air Force, and I don't know the job yet, just general electronics field. I'm leaving on Monday, and it seems like every show I watch regularly has some huge cliffhanger with a supposedly amazing resolution coming next week.
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Have someone record the shows, then watch them all on liberty weekend. Believe me, watching TV after all that can be an exceptionally invigorating release.
I have never believed that alt-time was fully a result of the bomb. It never seemed right, like a bizzarro universe, and I don't mean the differences between that one and the original time (i.e. lucky Hurley, wimpy Ben...). Something like a puppet show represents how everyone acts. Now with the return of Eloise in alt-time, that feeling makes more sense.
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Strider, Sorry if I've been ignoring your questions. I'm snowed under right now and won't be able to respond for another week. I'm chairing a workshop this week with 38 people from around the world.
I'm don't actually have a real theory about what's going on, at least not one I'm committed to. I just think your theory doesn't fit the existing data in too many places.
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Strider: I do remember your initial reaction to The Time Traveler's Wife. But since I'm awesome and only like awesome books, I knew you'd come around.
Also, RE: the Nuke, I do NOT believe the Nuke sunk the Island. I just don't know what the Nuke *actually* did. Don't we have conclusive proof that the Nuke did no such thing? Ben, Chang, and Ben's Dad being alive completely blow that theory out of the water (pun intended?). Chang was AT THE SWAN when the Nuke detonated, but Miles references him in his conversation with Sawyer in Re-Con, so we know the bomb didn't transport the time travelers, then sink the Island. In AltTIme, The Island sunk at another point, another time. Definitively. Plus, a lot of other cuh-razy stuff happened leading up to the nuke detonation (Ben's healing being one of the biggest) that we would be seeing repercussions of in altTime, had the nuke detonated in that line. My theory is the nuke didn't happen at all in AltTime. The question is, what did it effect, and how, in the original story, TimeLine Prime?
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Rabbit, no worries. I don't necessarily need you to answer all my questions, mostly just an acknowledgment that those questions need just as much answering as the ones that are problematic for my theory.
Leonide, it's worth pointing out that we don't actually have any definitive proof that the nuke EVER went off. Do we? Juliet's final hit, when everything flashed white could have *just* been a time jump right? I'm not saying it definitely didn't blow up, but we don't know that it definitely did either!
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A valid, previously considered point. But that begs the question that if the nuke didn't detonate, what did send them forward in time? Someone messing with the wheel again?
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A large electromagnetic discharge perhaps? Maybe it works on Desmond in one way and others in another way.
Or maybe it was just their mind that traveled, and they are also still living back in the 70's.
Perhaps the bomb didn't go off. Dharma then calls it the incident and builds the Swan station over the top of it, with the bomb as a fail safe. This is what then explodes when Desmond turns the key and destroys the hatch.
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I just have to say wow. I like how the writers have addressed what's going on, and they are actually managing to make me care about most of our losties flashforwards. After some extremely weak episodes I'm enjoying the past Richard and Desmond episodes immensely. And I wont get too spoilery because the episode hasn't aired everywhere, but they didn't just ignore all of the story lines from the last episode like most episodes do. That makes me soooooo happy, because I hate it when they build something interesting up, then wait 2 or 3 episodes for it to be concluded. I don't mind it when they ignore the unimportant boring plot lines.
I hate Lockemonster. I really do. And not in a fun way like I used to hate Ben or Keemy. He's not a fun villain for me. But almost every scene not involving him of the past few eps have been very enjoyable for me.
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Desmond's action made sense to me, but only in the light of the larger picture of my theory. If I'm right about altTime being an epilogue or fake universe or whatever...the important point being that the events on Island this season are what in actuality lead up to altTime...then I'm thinking that Desmond went there with Locke's name to do something similar as he did with Hurley, but upon seeing Locke had a flash/memory/whatever of Locke throwing him into the well and trying to kill him (again, this only works if this isn't a true altTime, but is actually taking place at some point in these characters subjective future). This leads him to a sort of crime of passion where he gets the uncontrollable urge to kill Locke.
I'm betting Locke ends up in the care of Jack at the hospital.
This episode I was also thinking about the nature of the people who seem to pick up on the wrongness/fakeness of altTime first. Charlie, Faraday, and Libbie were the first people to see through the facade (Desmond was prompted by Charlie), and they are also all characters who died on the Island. Like maybe for some reason they have more reason to pick up on the fact that something is wrong with this world, because somewhere deep down they know they died already.
I wonder how much of altTime will tie into the fact that we now have real confirmation that characters survive death on the Island (assuming the people who have been showing up to Hurley are actually the people we think they are, and not Jacob induced visions or something). Can altTime be some sort of afterlife?
The whispers reveal was a bit of a letdown. I mean, I think for people who haven't ever read the whisper transcripts it was probably pretty cool. But for those of us that have, we knew that the whispers were in some significant way connected to individuals who had died. But it just begs the question of who gets stuck on the Island and who "moves on". Are they stuck forever or can they do something to leave? Why can certain people who didn't die on the Island (Ben's mom, Isabella) appear on the Island? What is the nature of their afterlife? Will we get these answers? Are they integral to the future plot of Lost or is this the end of the whispers explanation?
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At this point, I'm operating under the assumption that people we've seen dead who didn't die on the island were MIB.
My question is why so many people appeared to Hurley off the island--Charlie, Eko, Ana Lucia--who died on the island.
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So you think Isabella was MIB when she was talking to Hurley and later to Richard? I think that's highly doubtful given her desire to stop MIB.
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I was so happy Hurley was able to see Libby again. If I remember correctly, Libby was in the mental institution when Hurley was there in the "real" timeline. We never found out why. I wonder if she had other problems or if she was there for the same reason. It would be interesting if in the "real" timeline she had flashes or memories of yet another timeline, and remembers Hurley from that one.
I really pleased with this episode. though I was hoping it would have been about 5 minutes longer. I wanted to see Jack talk to Claire now that he knows she is his sister. He hasn't been able to do that since he found out. Maybe next episode.
I actually laughed when Ben started talking to Desmond. Desmond was acting kind of strange, and Ben probably thought he was a predator.
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quote:(again, this only works if this isn't a true altTime, but is actually taking place at some point in these characters subjective future)
I think it makes sense either way. Regardless of altTime's nature, people get to have flashes between altTime and realTime.
I was actually wondering if for some reason he did it specifically to get Locke into the hospital to meet Jack. I'm not sure why you'd do that instead of just talking to Locke like a normal person, but since a) I'm pretty positive that the result of this WILL be Locke ending up meeting Jack and getting his spine fixed, b) Desmond might have all kinds of crazy insights as to how the timeline fits together, and he might just know that running over Locke is the best way to make that happen... dunno. It's feasible.
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I just realized....The Christian Shepherd appearences cannot be the smoke monster. In Season 4 or 5 (I can't remember which one) Jack is in his home and sees his father.
The smoke monster is stuck on the island, so it would not have been able to make it off to go visit Jack.
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btw, Geraine, I found your suggestion about Desmond, the nuke, and the failsafe above oddly compelling. Very interesting theory.
I am still constantly confused about the nature of visions on the Island. Between the idea that they could be smokey induced visions, Jacob induced visions, or actually the people they look like they are, I'm really at a loss of figuring out which is which. Christian Shepard is a prime example.
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I've been thinking along these lines for a few weeks now, since the Richard episode, and it congealed more fully last night. 
