I like how they said that you can't change the future. This is a mind time travel, not an actual time travel.

Blackrock Bob said:
I think Daniel has experimented on himself and/or had too much radiation exposure. I think he's just having side effects from all that and the island.

Posted on February 29, 2008 1:38 PM

Blackrock Bob you are like ants at a picnic, you take all of the fun out of the show! If the whole TV show we have invested 4 years of our lives on is about some guy losing his memory from radiation, then we' re all in for a big letdown.

I've been going nuts about Faraday's Journal:

http://impossiblefunky.blogspot.com/2008/02/faradays-journal.html

Yes somehow it course corrected itself. Originally Desmond could not get on the Helio because there was too many people.

Sayid fixed that by leaving Miles with John.

Thus making Charolette have to stay with Dan.

etc etc etc.

------

Wow, I had forgoten about the sickness thing with Rouseau.... Makes sense now.

I wonder if that is what Desmond had to take those injections while he was in the hatch. Maybe it was some sort of medicine that archored him where he was in time.

Wow, good thinking Hord. I agree. It was hard for me to reconcile "you can't change the future," when it seemed like Desmond was changing the future. But if that's true, doesn't that suggest that Desmond has some course correcting in his future...

It is interesting to note that their was a "sickness" on the "Black Rock" as well as on Rousseau's boat.

Was Rouseau able to find a "constant" and keep herself from going mad and dying?

She is very enigmatic and seems to know more than she shares.

Also, is Jacob someone caught in time and trapped on the island?

Thought, comments, corrections ...

Seems to me that Desmond being his constant has only two possibilities...either Desmond is Daniel's constant like Penny is to Desmond or as I remember it when he explained to Desmond that every equation needs a constant and then you work with variables to find the right ones to complete it. Maybe Daniel was working on his own equation for time travel and the constant he worked off was Desmond...the wrong referring to variables he was going to test...just a thought.

taking a step back into some other Desmond flash backs.

The one where he goes back in time(mind placement) after he blew the hatch...

The part where he goes to buy the ring from the lady in the shop and the lady gets freak by the fact that he "shouldn't" be buying the ring.

In fact she then spend time with him the rest of the day explaining that you can not change things and the universe has a way of correcting them.
(still who the hell was she and why does she know this...etc)

Hence all the stuff he did with charlie (trying to save him).

No go towards the fact that Dan points out that you can not change the future. Almost the same train of thought between the two.

Point is you can alter events within the time stream but it will eventually come back around and fix itself in a new way but the same end result (aka Charlie's death).

something bothers me.
The helicopter approached and landed on the island. With a time glitch that is.
But still Dharma-cargo is being dropped of at the island with a alarm warning regularly.... who does these drops and why can they reach the island .... without a time glitch...

Picture 5: vile vortices, anyone?

Daniel wrote his "Desmond constant" page back in 1996. Look at that scene. By himself, as though he's been there for awhile, thumbing backwards through the pages....eventually he comes across that note..look at his expression when he finds it, as though he hadn't seen it before. IF...IF anything goes wrong, doesn't mean it has or will, but if it does, Desmond is to be his constant. He wrote it way back when. IMO.

Deletia, your take on things is fairly sound, and is basically the "alternate realities" take on time travel. This is the same model used in the Back to the Future films. Where there is the normal timeline reality, but when Marty (or Biff) travels back in time and changes something, they create an entire new reality.

In this case, in Reality 1, Desmond came to the island unaware of anything.

Then Desmond went back in Flashes Before your eyes, and created a new reality. One with only subtle differences. Yet, one in which he would seem to have some knowledge of the island before he arrived.

Then, a third reality is created when Desmond goes back and meets Dan. In the first two realities, Dan would arrive on the island with no note of Desmond in his journal, and having never met Desmond. But, it in the third reality, Dan would have arrived at the island knowing more about the island, and knowing about Desmond, and indeed, having a note about Desmond in his journal.

But, we don't really know if this is the model of time travel the producers are now using. Previously, it seemed that the future was unchangeable, and that there was only one reality, and that the "cosmic conscience" would redirect events to make sure the true realty stayed intact (as explained to Desmond in "Flashes"). Now, however, it seems that at least fairly substantial chunks of the space-time continuum can be changed. Which, of course, usually introduces all sorts of paradoxes.

OK... why (???) future/now Dan doesn't remember past/Oxford Desmond... hmmm, maybe the whole 'remember the 3 cards on the beach' with Charlotte is a clue... maybe the electromagnetic properties of the island create some kind of memory issues...

which could inform the first season and so much that the Losties experienced...

deletia, I rewatched last week's episodes with the three cards. Charlotte definitely uses the word "remember" when she talks about him knowing the cards. So they're definitely trying for him to remember three cards he should already know. It's not a clairvoyant thing.

Also, in the next to last journal pic, the Real Time line seems to go straight down the middle of the page, from point A at the top to point B at the bottom, so to speak. It's the other lines that skew off from the main, direct branch of one event leading to another.

I'm choosing to leave things as simple as that: Reality (the "main" reality) is one straight line of events. Other alternate realities or changes to the past skew off from the main line.

Also, did you note that, when Daniel is putting on the lead apron, he casually says that you can't change the future. He seems to have little trouble believing he's sent Desmond back to change the past (at least a little), but he also seems clear that he can't change the future.

Is this the writers'/producers' way of telling us those flash-forwards are not going to change? That our Losties have no hope of amending what we've seen happen to them in the future?

The mind reels. I love this show. :)

Looking at the second to the last image it shows event a, b and c in a triangle. I think whatever theory the writers are going with takes us away from the idea that time is linear. I think it's a case of you can go from event a to c without ever having to have event b.

Now that we know that both Desmonds(1994 des and 2004 des) can't have active consiousness at the same time AND in 1994 he has his 2004 memory, but in 2004 time he only had his 1994 memory that there must be some sort of memory retained from the trip. I mean at the 1994 des should remember the time on the ship and the des on the boat will remember seeing Daniel in the 1994.

So the hardest thing to explain is how Dan doesn't remember seeing Des...

hmmm.. just a thought, but what if Desmond ends up kicking the bucket. What then would happen to Dan if he lost his constant. Maybe that's why he is crying in front of the TV, because he knows all is lost (no pun intended) kind of way out thinking, but hey ya never know

I think there is something that we still don't know about the Dan and Desmond relationship, because in Dans past (1996) he tells Desmond, "..you have to find your constant, find the thing that you REALLY CARE ABOUT..." I don't think Desmond is the person that Dan REALLY CARES ABOUT, there is something about their relationship that we don't know yet!

I had a totally different reading, Detroit- I figured Dan got a wallop of side effects, but remembered everything nonetheless. The side effects he did get allowed him to see the future--thus the card tricks, predicting what would come up. It was anticipated (thus CS Lewis helping him out with the cards), since he'd been exposed to so much radiation back at Oxford.

And I don't think Dan exactly forgot Des- I think he never knew him until he sent him back, at which point he knew him all along. The past was changed. It's like how some people now don't believe in the Holocaust--except without the lying. It happened, then it didn't happen. (or in this case, it didn't happen, then it did.)

So, I'm theorizing that Dan's note to himself wasn't in the notebook for the first half of the episode, even though it's been in his notebook for 8 years. This may seem convoluted, but I think its ambiguity fits in with all of the argument over predetermination/fate or free will.

Remeber this.... when we first met Dan the scene opens with the helicopter in distress. dan is shaken and told "jump!" This is where the helicopter didn't come to the island on the right cordinates, thus leaving Dan with some memory loss. This is why he and charlotte were doing mind remembering tricks with the playing cards. Dan has forgot about des because of this. this is why Dan wrote in his note book about des being his constant.

Time travel - The way I've always understood it is if you remove yourself from the time stream and change the past it does not effect you but the people that are still within the constant.

i.e. Show Jounernyman (rip from NBC) used this same principle. He would jump back in time change something the things around him changed bu he still remembered what it should or shouldn't be...

I think Dan has the same thing. Up till the point on the island he had never met Desmond. He arrived on the island and went "outside of time".

on the island he talked to desmond and told him to do something in the past that he had never done atm. Thus sending Desmond to a presious self.

In the past pre-Desmond, Dan had eventually figured out the right calibration for the mouse/maze thing. But by sending Desmond there from a future self he was able to skip past it allowing his past self to believe Desmond.

Yeah Dove, but if some guy came from the future, and helped you run some experiments to figure out time travel, and told you that you were going to meet him in the future on an island.... I think you might remember that person. But, as Desmond said, maybe he forgets.

that part aboyt the rat knows the maze because im going to train it later on - reminds me of Bill and teds Excellent Adventure - don't forget to set your watch!

someone below mentioned that Faraday not remembering Desmond is like Jack not remembering him. I think there is a slight difference. I wouldn't remember some random person I talked to for a few secons several years later, but surly I would recall someone telling me I made a time machine and they are from the future and need to speak to me and we run experiments together etc etc

That fifth image is a variation on the kabbalistic tree of life. it's shifted around a bit, but the connections seem consistent.

Shadow-that's genius right there. I didn't think of that until you said it. It might also have something to do with next week's episode. We saw Daniel and that red headed twerp in Radiation suits doing some kind of experiment, maybe Daniel left himself that note knowing that he was going to do the experiment on himself later.

One of the notes states "the Lorenz invariant". I had to look it up - http://www.ee.siue.edu/~alozows/library/biblio/Lozowski99hamiltonian.pdf

Not exactly sure what it says and am going to have to look at it closer - but it seems really mid-blowing (as in causing a short-circuit) ;)

"set the machine to 2.342" - there come our good old numbers, 23 and 42!!

I think Daniel has experimented on himself and/or had too much radiation exposure. I think he's just having side effects from all that and the island.

Doesn't the "Desmond is my constant" comment mean that Faraday is jumping back-and-forth through time, also?

It would explain:

When we first meet him:

a) Why he needs a caretaker
b) Why he is crying, but doesn't know why

On the Island:

c) His reaction when he jumps (pushed?) out of the helicopter
d) His memory holes (cards)

You seem surprised that Faraday doesn't remember Desmond, but when Jack first happens a pon Desmond in the hatch, Desmond doesn't remember Jack either. Also, Dan only saw Des for like 5 seconds before he got on the chopper with Sayid.. so.. just a thought.

Whoever wrote the Desmond note in red did not write the rest of the journal, the handwriting is differant.

just in case someone says that "mesin" is a variable, you can clearly see to the left on the ast image that "me" is a variable, or "m" times "e" so the sin^2 is inaccurate

last image has sin^2 without an angle or radian, doesnt make sense. his theory is debunked!

Virus: I think that was the implication. Interesting stuff.

Desmond also asked Faraday what protects his head from the radiation when they were back in his lab. Perhaps all the radiation wiped out his memory and that is why he can't remember anything?

I suppose that the comparison to Desmond's situation and Voneghut's Slaughterhouse 5 has already been made, yes?