Lost (spoilers)

Gamblour. · May 07, 2009, 08:33:51 AM

Quote from: JG on May 06, 2009, 08:45:30 PM
no. in moment z, there is only john locke A, who is seeing, and guiding, an earlier john locke A. then the earlier john locke A disappears from moment Z, on his destiny to fulfill his quest, which includes dying, being reborn, and guiding an earlier version of himself in moment Z.

Right ?

Actually, it's really funny that I just watched Timecrimes because that film, like this moment you're talking about, starts where an effect happens before a cause. It would be like dividing something by zero. If Locke A is experiencing this for the first time, then it's impossible for Alpert to have been informed by Locke. Locke B is still Locke A and just because we're narratively forward doesn't mean there are two of them. Time travel premises rely on this.

It was like when my friend explained (and I had never ever even thought about this) that in Back to the Future Part II, if Marty went into the future, it would be a future where people wonder where Marty's been for 30 years. That's the best explanation I have for the beginning of the paradox.

In general, the writing assumes that the future and the past can lie on top of each other. I guess more simply it's like a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" except the chicken hatched from the egg goes back in time to tell the egg to hatch. Sort of.

Pas · May 07, 2009, 09:03:50 AM

Quote from: Gamblour. on May 07, 2009, 08:33:51 AM
It was like when my friend explained (and I had never ever even thought about this) that in Back to the Future Part II, if Marty went into the future, it would be a future where people wonder where Marty's been for 30 years. That's the best explanation I have for the beginning of the paradox.

I think that the idea of travelling in the past is really a headache in terms of possible plot holes etc. but travelling in the future is not a headache at all : it is true that you disappear from ''your present'' (why wouldn't you) and you cannot alter the future in any way that a normal person couldn't (you are not advantaged).

Travelling in the future is just like getting frozen and waking up X years later so yeah it's not as fucked up as the past.

I think time travel is completely unmanageabable and it's really making me disinterested from the series. Before that it was mysterious and mystical, it even seemed like it was gonna be some ''semi-realistic'' quantic/astronomic/religious/whatever explanations. Now it's just a fucking headache and a series of situtions designed to try to explain the way time travel works in that fake universe.

Also electro magnetism = time travel ? wtf
Also if you can't make a CGI of a submarine that doesn't look like it was done in 2001 then just don't do one, NOT a necessity.

I still like the show but it pisses me off.

diggler · May 07, 2009, 09:31:18 AM

yea that CGi submarine was pretty awful, almost as bad as the smoke monster. why attempt such a flashy shot of the sub? it looked like it was pulled from a videogame. aside from that i thought this was a pretty great episode.

loved Cheng's confrontation with Hurley. "you're 46?"

SiliasRuby · May 07, 2009, 11:05:35 AM

So much fun, this episode was.

picolas · May 07, 2009, 05:25:51 PM

Quote from: Gamblour. on May 07, 2009, 08:33:51 AMIt was like when my friend explained (and I had never ever even thought about this) that in Back to the Future Part II, if Marty went into the future, it would be a future where people wonder where Marty's been for 30 years.

NOOO. your friend doesn't fully understand time travel. just because he travels to the future doesn't mean the whole past is written and he doesn't exist in it. the only way people would wonder where he was for the last 30 years is if he never went back after his visit to the future. he does, so that's in no way a paradox.

pas rap, you're also not fully getting it. there are no infinite locke's because there's only one locke. his future self is guiding his past self, yes. and his past self will become his future self. that doesn't mean anyone's going to multiply. that's exactly the way it always was. there's only one.

it's amazing seeing ben make that face at the end of the episode. for the first time since we've known him he doesn't have a clue what's going to happen.. i think jacob has to be someone from the future.

polkablues · May 07, 2009, 08:38:27 PM

Pic's got the hang of it. Imagine that time is a ruler and Locke's life is a string traveling along it. Whenever he jumps through time, it's like the string loops around back to an earlier point on the ruler, alongside the string that was already at that point. The string can loop however many times he travels through a particular point on the timeline, which could conceivably result in many instances of Locke (all from different sections of the string) overlapping in the same place at the same time, but there's still only ever one string total.

Here's what's fucking with my mind right now: the compass. Richard gave it to Locke by the Nigerian plane, then Locke gave it to Richard when he traveled back to 1954, then when he comes back to the island, he has Richard give it to the previous instance of Locke (which is how Locke gets it in the first place). The compass seems to exist in a closed loop; how did it exist outside of the repeating circle of Locke and Richard trading it back and forth?

Pas · May 07, 2009, 09:11:41 PM

I disagree with you Picolas about Gamblour's friend not getting it. If I travel through time right now thirty years in the future, why would a double of me continue to live ''my life'' ? If I go in the future, I'm gone from ''my present''. I disagree that I create a double that continues living in my present.

picolas · May 07, 2009, 09:19:51 PM

Quote from: Pas Rap on May 07, 2009, 09:11:41 PM
I disagree with you Picolas about Gamblour's friend not getting it. If I travel through time right now thirty years in the future, why would a double of me continue to live ''my life'' ? If I go in the future, I'm gone from ''my present''. I disagree that I create a double that continues living in my present.

there is no double that continues to live your life! i said nothing of the sort! re-read the post, sir! as long as you return to the present after you visit the future, no one in the future will have any reason to wonder where you've been because you were in their past because you went back to it after you visited the future. no double is created! time stays the same! if marty lived in the future forever, THEN people would've wondered where he'd been because he never returned to live the rest of the past. but as it stands he did return and so there is no paradox.

Pas · May 07, 2009, 09:50:48 PM

then according to your theory : the future already considers that I will going back in ''my present'' so I have never gone missing right?

so then let's say I go 30 years in the future and DIE IN the future, then I will have been missing since 30 years because I've never been back in the past. But if I go in the future and I've never been missing in ''my present'', it means I CANNOT die in the future. Is this clear, do I make sense ??? that's why I disagree with your theory of travelling in the future

edit: what I was saying in my first post is that in time travelling in the future there is no paradox since it's pretty much like travelling in Japan or whatever, you are gone from ''your present'' from the moment you go until the moment you return in ''your present''. But according to the ''people of the future'' you have not ''returned to your present'' yet so they haven't seen you in a while ... you see ??? like there is only one reality so if they remember seeing me like yesterday being 54 years old it means that when I would travel in the future there would be a 54 yo version of MEANING A DOUBLE ... you see ? It's so fucking hard to wrap my mind around this I don't even know if I make sense (I'm french also so english is a barrier)

anyway I want to say that even though you say your theory creates no double, I think it does. and therefore it's impossible (when is the double created etc)

Whereas time travelling in the past is completely unmanageable in my mind

(((drunk ps: please reply because Ive broken my brain writing this lol)

picolas · May 07, 2009, 10:20:11 PM

NOOOOO

okay, listen here: time is time is time. it doesn't change. it's what it was, is and always will be. there are no alternate versions. there is only one. if you travel to the future or the past, whatever you do will be whatever always happened there.

marty travels to the future. people who knew him don't wonder where he's been for the past 30 years because he was in those past 30 years AFTER he'd been to the future. he's not changing the past, he just experienced it differently from everyone living time in the right order. for people living CHRONOLOGICALLY his trip to the future then back seemed instantaneous because he's TRAVELING in TIME. this is what time travel is.

you're assuming stuff changes when you go to the future or the past. NOT SO. it was always like that. i don't know how to explain this more clearly... say you go back in time and shoot a guy. a newspaper article about the guy being shot isn't going to magically appear in your present. it will have ALWAYS been there.

there are other theories of time travel where you can genuinely affect things, but that involves parallel universes. so far lost isn't doing that. yet.

Pas · May 07, 2009, 10:33:56 PM

Yes I understand that ! Please adress this :

you say : ''marty travels to the future. people who knew him don't wonder where he's been for the past 30 years because he was in those past 30 years AFTER he'd been to the future.''

I understand.

You say : ''if marty lived in the future forever, THEN people would've wondered where he'd been because he never returned to live the rest of the past.''

I understand.

Now adress this point I tried to make in the last post :

you go in the future and you have never been missing for 30 years like you say ok ''because he was in those past 30 years AFTER he'd been to the future.''

two paradox :

1)You have a double in that future (which to me is a paradox because I consider this impossible because his life would be affected by every breath you would take) also don't deny you have a double like before (

)because if you have not been missing it means that there is a 50+ yo version of yourself existing in this future
2)try shooting yourself in the brain and you cannot die because this future assumes you will be going back to ''your present''. You don't even have to shoot yourself : You own two sentences are paradoxical (sp?)... the future doesn't know yet if you will or won't go back in the past. You say ''time is time is time'' but now that your are in the future, how can the future know if you will get hit by a bus ? the future is your new present until you go back in your ''own present''

please adress these two points so I can understand your theory more clearly, sorry for the mess and confusion

picolas · May 07, 2009, 10:46:04 PM

Quote from: Pas Rap on May 07, 2009, 10:33:56 PM
1)You have a double in that future (which to me is a paradox because I consider this impossible because his life would be affected by every breath you would take) also don't deny you have a double like before ( )because if you have not been missing it means that there is a 50+ yo version of yourself existing in this future

okay. there's possibly a 50+ year old version of you somewhere. that's not a paradox, though. that's just you living in two times at once.

Quote from: Pas Rap on May 07, 2009, 10:33:56 PM
2)try shooting yourself in the brain and you cannot die because this future assumes you will be going back to ''your present''. You don't even have to shoot yourself : You own two sentences are paradoxical (sp?)... the future doesn't know yet if you will or won't go back in the past. You say ''time is time is time'' but now that your are in the future, how can the future know if you will get hit by a bus ? the future is your new present until you go back in your ''own present''

you can totally die in the future or shoot yourself. that's fine. it's not a paradox. marty didn't.

Gamblour. · May 07, 2009, 10:57:57 PM

Hahah. Wow. I did not expect this.

Time travel in movies and tv relies (DEPENDS on) the assumption of a paradox...in that we see something happen before it could have happened.

I think what's happening here is a differing view on the behavior of time. The question is: are we traveling through time or traveling along time? Through, I think, implies that time is a straight line, that something cannot exist without it happening first. Marty going to a Marty-less future is an example. This is a universe in which paradoxes are possible, because events in the past could be changed. Marty can go back, hook up his parents, and he gets the 80s version of happiness: a new truck and a nice house.

Traveling along time assumes that events, past and present, are written. Marty goes to the future and his older 'other' self is there. (BUT THINK ABOUT THIS: this doesn't make any sense because if you, right now, were visited by a younger version of yourself, you would be like, "Wtf? I didn't do that as a youngster" It would be a multiverse scenario) A corollary of this, I think, would be: past events cannot be changed! If Locke saw Richard Alpert, Locke could not only NOT change events, but he must ALSO play into them! This is the sort of timeline used in Timecrimes. The idea of both assuming events and entering into them with prior knowledge (thus enacting to create the events) and also mishaps and chance that also help create the events (a larger indicator of fatalism).

RIGHT NOW, Lost has assumed the second version. Locke has just manipulated events into being exactly what they were. He has set things to be the way they were for him with the leg wound AND even back when he told Richard to visit him as a baby.

I predict, given these things (plus it would really suck if they could change things), that anything that happens with the bomb or energy will just play into what has already happened. I also predict that Jack will be Jacob and meet his ghost dad at some point in the finale.

picolas · May 07, 2009, 11:03:30 PM

i totally forgot how stuff actually changes in back to the future. i'm embarrassed. back to the future is the reason why people have all these time travel misconceptions!

diggler · May 07, 2009, 11:54:07 PM

Quote from: polkablues on May 07, 2009, 08:38:27 PM

Here's what's fucking with my mind right now: the compass. Richard gave it to Locke by the Nigerian plane, then Locke gave it to Richard when he traveled back to 1954, then when he comes back to the island, he has Richard give it to the previous instance of Locke (which is how Locke gets it in the first place). The compass seems to exist in a closed loop; how did it exist outside of the repeating circle of Locke and Richard trading it back and forth?

THANK YOU! wouldn't the compass just keep getting older and older as it passed through time on a loop? it's stuck, so doesn't that mean it would deteriorate eventually? unless richard replaced it at some point in those 53 years. if not, that means the compass never had a maker!