Tim Weaver sent the following on 5/5/2008 8:26 PM:
> 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 agree, and that's where they messed up. Because if they do any
"correcting" in the past or the present, it *will* affect some (or all)
aspects of the future. Otherwise, what's the purpose for the
"correction" in the first place?
>> 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.
It's the "one way or another" (and its implicit course corrections) that
creates the tangential (and sometimes wholly unrelated) changes. Chaos
theory and the butterfly effect would apply to these corrective
manipulations of the timeline.
--
Jim Gysin
Waukesha, WI
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