Jim Gysin wrote:
> 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 believe what was meant by "won't change the future" was meant in context
of what the viewer has seen. Meaning they won't pull a deus ex machina
near
the time of a FF and say that's what would have happened, but ~this~ is
what
really happened.
> 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.
This much is true. Alone, Desmond's act of seeking out Faraday is change.
Mr. Hawking was only there to explain to the audience that a given event
or
occurrence (Desmond ending up on the island; characters being linked to
each
other) will happen one way or another.
--
Tim Weaver
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea - massive,
difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-
boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
- Gene Spafford, 1992
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