Re: saying hello and why I'm not posting

Steven L. sent the following on 5/5/2008 4:45 PM:
> Jim Gysin wrote:
>> Steven L. sent the following on 5/3/2008 11:11 PM:
>>> Jim Gysin wrote:
>>>> Steven L. sent the following on 5/3/2008 7:09 PM:
>>>>> himiko@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Are we even sure that the flashforwards we're seeing are all
related?
>>>>>> There could be any number of alternate timelines and we could be
>>>>>> seeing different ones that don't necessarily relate to each other.
>>>>>
>>>>> In podcasts and press interviews, the producers have said 
>>>>> repeatedly that the flashforwards are all really happening in the 
>>>>> future.  There are no alternate possibilities or multiple 
>>>>> timelines, because they wanted the audience to connect emotionally 
>>>>> with the flashforwards, which would be more difficult if the 
>>>>> flashforwards were only hypothetical.
>>>>
>>>> Did they give the same assurances regarding the present and the past?
>>>
>>> They can't.  Desmond has been traveling into the past and changing 
>>> it. He killed a mouse.  :-)
>>
>> I'm not sure how they're gonna try to explain it all, but "course 
>> corrections" have to involve a "correction" at *some* point in the 
>> timeline, and if you're not gonna do it in the future, you have to do 
>> it in the past.  Or else it won't get done.
> 
> Sigh.  Here we go again:
> 
> Faraday sent Eloise one hour into the future.
> Eloise returned with knowledge of how to run the maze.
> Then Eloise died.
> 
> Once Eloise learned the maze from the future, Faraday could no longer 
> teach it.  You can't teach a mouse something it already knows.
> 
> But once it died, it never survived into the future to learn it then 
> either.
> 
> So one way or the other, the timeline has been broken.

And something has changed.  That's my point.  *Where* along the 
past/future timeline have we been assured that no change will take 
place?  The answer is the future, which leaves the past to absorb the 
changes.

> It's exactly the same problem with any trip into the future that gives 
> you advance knowledge:
> 
> Want to win the Nobel Prize in medicine for curing cancer?  Build a time

> machine and travel into the 23rd century when cancer has been cured. 
> Take a sample of their advanced medicine back with you to 2008. Announce

> your cure for cancer.
> 
> Question:  If you are credited with the cure for cancer in 2008, then 
> how could anyone have invented it in the 23rd century in the first 
> place?

They no longer *did* invent it, at least according to the official 
record.  In this instance, the past was changed *first* and the future 
followed (in more ways than one.)  Changes to the future won't change 
the past, but changes to the past can and *will* change the future.  And 
since Darlton has said that they won't change the future, then they can 
only "correct" things in the past.  But once they correct/change things 
in the past, those changes affect the future and Darlton's promise is 
broken anyway.

I'm starting to sound like Spock in that Harry Mudd episode.

> The medicine just keeps traveling from the 23rd century back to 
> 2008 without ever having been invented in the first place.

No it doesn't.  But even if it did, are you saying that it never gets 
invented?  Isn't that a change.

Again, bottom line: course-correction requires change.  And change *has* 
to happen *somewhere* along the timeline.

-- 
Jim Gysin
Waukesha, WI