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Time travel sure is messy, isn't it? Last week, and again today, Jugdish wrote articles talking about his frustration, as a non-sci-fi geek (unlike myself) in understanding it all. I'm a huge sci-fi fan, and always have been, but I too was hoping they wouldn't go down this road. Not because I don't like it, because this is some of the most fantastic and fun television I have ever watched. But I totally understand how people unfamiliar with time travel, or sci-fi could be frustrated. Hell, even people who DO love sci-fi and time travel can get flustered in all of this mess, myself included. So, at the suggestion of Jugdish, I'm going to dish out some of my thoughts on time travel in the Lost world. I'm going to mostly focus on those darned old rules, because that seems to be the root of everyone's issues. Just remember, time travel isn't really possible (as far as we know) and therefore everything I say, and everything everyone else says on this site is purely their own understanding and conjecture. This of course amplifies our problem of understanding it, but we are truly at the mercy of the writers on this.
The Rules
So let's start out with The Rules. The Rules have been mentioned by Dr. Chang and by Daniel Faraday. This is exactly what Faraday had to say about it to Sawyer:
"Time--it's like a street, all right? We can move forward on that street, we can move in reverse, but we cannot ever create a new street. If we try to do anything different, we will fail every time. Whatever happened, happened."
And then later he says this about the rules to Sawyer when he's knocking on the Hatch door:
"If it didn't happen, it can't happen."
Daniel specifically says that if you try to do anything different, you will fail every time. But this statement alone means that you can still try. It just also means that "the cosmic overmind" or whatever you want to call it, won't let anything happen that "breaks" time.
So here's an interesting way to look at it, that apparently even Dr. Chang didn't think to mention. The worker tells Dr. Chang, "So what, we're going to go back in time and kill Hitler?" to which Dr. Chang fills the man in on his ignorance. But technically, you could go back in time and kill Hitler, without changing anything. What if you went back in time, and kept trying to kill Hitler. But no matter how hard you tried, you always found yourself failing, thanks to that darned old Cosmic Overmind. Eventually, you find yourself on April 30, 1945, the day Hitler committed suicide. You figure there's no chance in changing anything now, since you've failed so often before, so you decide on a front row seat instead, and hide near to where the suicide happens. You watch as Hitler begins to put the cyanide tablet in his mouth, and at the same time position the gun to shoot himself. But then he pauses. It seems he's had an epiphany and knows how to defeat the vile Allies. You can't let this happen, so you jump out of your hiding spot and shoot him dead, as he falls to the floor he drops the cyanide tablet into his own mouth. Naturally you have to kill Eva Braun as well. Now, you don't want to get captured so you set the whole thing up to look like a suicide. As you leave the room you congratulate yourself for finally succeeding and changing things. But did you really change anything? Or did you simply do what time had always recorded you as doing.
Now, the illustration above could technically be viewed 2 ways. The first way is how most people seem to think of time travel. That method says that in the original timeline, Hitler did in fact commit suicide. Even if he paused and considered not doing it, eventually he did do it. But when you went back in time, you technically changed things. The end outcome was the same, but still, history was changed all the same. If some of you are thinking of Lost in this way, then that is why you are getting confused and assuming that they've changed the past. But if what Daniel said above is even slightly correct, this method cant' be true. This is because with this method, even though the outcome is the same, you've still created a new street. Daniel said there can't be new streets.
The second method says that nothing changed, because although we didn't realize it, in reality you were ALWAYS the one who killed Hitler. There was never an "original" timeline because there can be only one timeline. If you accept a concept of fate and destiny, then this can makes sense. To put it a little more simply, technically, you could try to do anything in the past that the details are sketchy about. For example, did you fail every math test in high school miserably, but somehow you got an A in the class? Well, then it stands to reason if you find a time machine in the future, that perhaps you went back in time and changed your grade. You didn't change the past, that's just the way it always happened. This is what I believe, due to the rules above, is the concept in Lost. The producers are trying to screw with us, by saying "You can't change anything" and then blatantly making it appear that they are changing things. But they are, in fact, still following their own rules.
Let's take another illustration and try to simplify time travel even further. Let's imagine that time, and all of the events that happen within time are just a 2x4 piece of wood stretching infinitely in one direction. The wood, which is actually time, can't be changed. Its wood. Its solid. We are termites that are living inside of the wood. We dig tunnels through that wood that illustrates our life as we move through time. With this illustration, the tunnels are always there (yes, I know it's hard to imagine the termites not eating their way through and you're going to ask stuff like "then who created the tunnels in the first place" but just accept that this isn't a perfect analogy and my purpose is to simplify the time travel on Lost). We can't go back and erase one of our tunnels. IF we make a tunnel through the wood, it remains.
Now let's apply this illustration to Lost. First, for the benefit of making this simpler, we'll add some labels on the piece of wood. These labels will be years, just as we know them now. So, John Locke is a termite living in a point of the wood labeled 2005. He has a tunnel behind him that stretches all the way back to 1956 when he was born (and in reality, all of the tunnels already exist. The termites aren't actually digging any tunnels because their tunnels are already there). So, when he flashes on the island, his little termite self is "plucked" from his tunnel, and placed into a new spot in the wood on a label called 1954. He already has a tunnel here, so he just follows it. He can't change any of the other tunnels that exist on this spot in the wood, he can only follow his tunnel. His tunnel, leads directly to a point that intersects with Richard's tunnel in 1954. Remember, none of these tunnels are changing in the slightest. The termites are simply following the predetermined path of their tunnel.
If you start to think of time, kind of like the wood, and of the people's lives kind of like a termite, following his tunnel through the wood, many of the other questions in Juggy's article make some sense. For instance, his question of how someone could travel back in time, to 2 years before they were born, and die there, does it mean they ever exisited? Of course they existed, they have a tunnel in the wood. That tunnel of theirs no doubt intersected with many other people, and left impressions and had impacts on some of those people's lives. And the tunnels are always there to show they existed. So this is no longer a question you have to ask.
In the end, understanding time travel comes down to understanding perspective. To all of us (who haven't traveled through time yet) we perceive time as existing from one moment to the next. But to an observer traveling through time, the perspective is different. If we were a termite crawling through our tunnel, our perspective would be just that, of our tunnel. But to an observer, who has the luxury of slicing a piece of the wood, they would perceive its shape differently than the termite, because their perspective is different.
At the same time that I'm so intrigued by the time travel element, and so many of the rest of you are frustrated about it, I can't help but wonder if we're all focusing on the wrong thing. Yes, Lost has time travel in it. Yes, it can seem messy and confusing. But what's really in question here is the same Free Will vs. Predestination that has always been a part of Lost. The Rules of time travel on Lost is just a method for the writers to show us that there is no such thing as free will. Nobody gets to choose anything in their lives, because the tunnels have already been dug. But we've already been told that the rules don't apply to Desmond. So does that mean that Desmond is the only person who does have free will? Is he digging new tunnels, or following other people's tunnels, or something else we can't even conceive of yet? And if there's one thing I've learned from working in Human Resources for so many years, it's that if there is EVER one exception to a rule, typically there are other exceptions that you just don't know about yet. So in the end, when the producers wrap this whole thing up, will we discover that through it all we've had free will, or was it all predestined to happen? That, my lost friends, is a question I can't even begin to answer.
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OK, so I'm not a sci-fi fanatic, hence I am still totally confused!!! However after reading Blitz Wing's theory...I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (thanks to you too Astro!) The 2 theories of time travel make sense with the LOST storylines!!! Good work guys!!!
That's brilliant dude, The whole tunnel thing made it much easier to the people to understand. Thanks a bunch!
Amazing article! The termites in the wood made me think of Donnie Darko and his orb/sphere prjectile popping out of his chest. I think I get what your saying Astro. Great job.
I was just saying this exact thing the other day, almost word for word. LOL but seriously, good work. The intersecting tunnels idea I'm sure will help alot of people.
I only have one word to say, Astro:
Awesome.
extremely confusing indeed, but this article definitely helped! Thank You.
dymonaz, me and a friend had this very discussion about how free will can exist in a predetermined situation like LOST has and we came up with a very similiar conclusion. And remember, this is only our opinion and thoughts on it, but we decided that the termites absolutely have free will. From their perspective, if they come to a knot in the wood, they stop, and they make a decision about which way to go around the knot. So to the termite crawling through the wood, free will absolutely exists. However, from an observer out side of the wood, watching the termites, the entire world of the termites are predetermined and the termites have no free will. So once again, basically, we're right back to perspective being the key to this all.
Now, some people would say, well, if you know that there is no free will from the perspective of the observer, then you have to admit that the termite's view is wrong. They "think" they have free will but don't. But that just isn't how perspective works. The observers perspective doesn't make the termites perspective invalid or wrong. Its just different.
as a firm believer in fate and destiny and a viewer of Lost as such, i absolutely love this article.
Long time no post, thus long post. Anyways, AstroWidmore has the very right idea about time travel in this article - good job.
Now, on the topic of free will vs fate vs time travel. Somewhy (* waves to SJQ *), some people get very frustrated at the very thought of them not having the free will, thus they tend to fight off the argument of predetermined fate's existence. Take Jack for example, right?
The thing is... it doesn't matter, and it makes everyone arguing either point wrong. And the outcome of this argument does not even depend on possibility, or impossibility of time travel. It does not depend on possibility or impossibility of multiple time lines/streets. And this is what Lost, as series, is all about. Think Dharma vs hostiles - who are the good guys?
The thing is, fate cannot possibly exist without free will. The problem at hand, a lot of people don't seem to understand, is that free will is about making decisions. Not about changing them. In Lost's universe, your decisions are permanent. Just like in normal life. If you're late to work - you _are_ late to work. Any decision that you make - it has always been made and has always existed, even before you made it.
If you see Charlie dying in the future, and you decide to save him, you always made that decision. Your vision of him dying, was correct - Charlie does die. Your vision was imprecise. Just like passing people in the street - you see someone you know, you get closer, say "Hi", and then have to say "Excuse me, I thought you were someone else" when they turn around.
Now, from outsider perspective, or when looking back at this as a memory, it might seem, that you had no free will - the fate corrected you anyways, but that's a wrong way to interpret that experience. You _could_ have let Charlie fall off the cliff, or get struck by lightning. But you didn't - how is that not free will?
Draw a circle on the paper now. Does it have an end? You follow the line, you always end up where you were. One might argue, that this is exactly the lack of free will, but that's not true! The circle does end! It exists on that piece of paper and you can get off it and look at it. Observe the beauty of the line, that doesn't end. You have a choice of not following it. Except that there's no other circle around. Well, at least not in the Lost universe. You can jump right back on it and travel back and forth, but can't change the line. It's just there.
Actually, you may see me next to you on that line, or you might see me on the opposite side of it. We can meet by going faster, slowing down, getting off the circle and jumping, by becoming "unstuck". There's plenty of free will! The only predetermined thing is the circle itself, but the way you use it - that is totally up to you. And you only "moan" about the lack of free will when you see that the circle is predetermined. And yet, you still have a choice of not going through with it. Of course, the other option of being "unstuck" is not exactly appealing and might cause side effects, but you DO have it.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. And thus doing things at "your own will" is not exactly free either - it comes with great responsibility and cost! And even if the other "line" of time existed - it would also be a circle. It could be blue or red, instead of yellow or black. And you could jump there. But from your own perspective - your _choice_ of going there always existed in super-time. You always made that jump. You're lucky, if you can get back to where you were. In some universes you can't. And were you to come back, before the jump, and warn yourself not do it, and then not do it - well - that's another jump! Unfortunatelly in Lost, you can't jump to another circle. But that's not such a big problem, is it?
To finish off, lets get back to the original thought of destiny not existing without free will. Imagine you hurt a lot of people. You travel back in time, and warn yourself, so that you don't hurt them. And you actually change your future, which sort of creates a paradox. What does that mean? It's one of the two - by changing the future, you destroy your future self. Your future self gets to live, still having done what he did, meaning that he did not really change it (with a different future self also existing). That is both, the free will and the destiny - your another self is happy, but you don't exist or are unhappy. Free will created destiny. You limited your destiny yourself, by using free will (twice - at making the original hurt and by traveling in time). No paradox whatsoever, no mutual exclusion.
My problem with time travel is that it's a chicken or the egg conundrum. The thing most up to debate for me is Locke seeing Richard and telling him to go see him as a baby. Now is that what caused Richard to go see baby Locke or would that have happened regardless and people are just assuming that Locke sent Richard to find him? I don't see how Locke could have grown up to appear on the island and then gone back in time to tell Richard to find him so that he'd grow up to be on the island. If Richard never sent him on his path, then he probably wouldn't have ended up on the island. I guess you could argue Richard never sent him on his path because he failed the test or that the scene we saw of Locke as a young boy was maybe from the changed future or from some parallel universe.
And that's the inherent problem with time travel. If in one timeline Locke is never visited by Richard and in another, Richard comes to see him as a kid then there are two different threads and thus two parallel universes, which in effect means there are two "streets."
For now, I'm clinging to the hope that the time traveling is basically like the movie Groundhog Day. The losties appear and they can affect things in that time as if everything is real, but once they flash out into another time, that time they were just in resets so no one outside the losties will ever have experienced that corrupted timeline.
Time is a two-by-four...travel along it...or let it hit you over the head. Either way, we'll be entertained! Fabulous article, Astro. Your termite analogy will likely guide my thinking about this for quite some time.
And BlitzWing's refinement was brilliant. Why not both types of time travel? Why not predeterminism and free will duking it out to the very end? You gave the most satisfying possible reason I have yet read for Ben's cryptic line, "He changed the rules." Alex's death was so horrific to me -- she was one of my very favorite characters, in terms of potential. Her death was shocking. The fact that Ben was operating from his predeterminism mind-bent and ran headlong into Widmore as a Free Will agent -- and Alex died!-- was the stuff of superbly timeless drama. I have a feeling that there is much more of the same until the end of the story.
Thank you all, not just for thinking this out, but for writing it out.
Good thoughts Blitz Wing. I really enjoyed your post. You should of sent it to one of us mods and we could pf posted it as an article.
Good theories, Blitz Wing. Well thought out.
As you noted, we've seen evidence of Desmond's method of "brain" time-travel causing him some confusion -- remember last season he told Hurley about what Locke said in his "speech," and Hurley asked "What speech?" Desmond immediately realized what he'd done and said "Never mind!" Fifteen minutes later... tah-dah! Speech. Whoa, dude.
Loved the Killing Hitler example....amusingly written.
I'm a Sci-Fi fan myself, and I have given Time Travel a lot of thought over the years.
I believe in the second Time Travel scenario you discussed: All things have already happened and are predetermined.....fate, destiny, no free-will, that kind of stuff. So in your example of killing Hitler, you were always meant to go back in time to kill him and cover it up to look like a suicide.
So after years of believing this "no free-will fate" scenario, it occurred to me....why does it have to be one way or the other....fate or no fate? Why can't both exist? Why can't some forms of Time Travel yield fate (where everything has already happened and can't be changed) and some other forms of Time Travel yield no fate (being able to actually change the future)?
So apply this to Lost:
What if the Island "Skipping" form of Time Travel is the fate kind....everything has already happened, you can't change it because whatever you do you were always meant to do it.
And what if Daniel Faraday's "Brain" Time Travel machine was no fate....you can change the future?
That would explain a few things....Desmond is "Special" because he can in fact change the future as his method of Time Travel (Faraday's Machine) is different than the Island's method of Time Travel. So Whitmore is pissed that he got kicked off his island, he can't change how things happened with the Island's method of Time Travel....so he funds Faraday to build a time machine where he can change things and in effect "change the rules". Perhaps Whitmore and Ben both got to see the future with the Island's form of Time Travel....they saw that Alex was still alive. Ben thinks the "Rules" say that Alex is still alive in the future....so Ben tells Keamy to go ahead and shoot Alex, thinking no matter what it can't happen because Alex is alive in the future. But....Aha! Whitmore had used Faraday's Time Travel method to change things instead of the Island's method....therefore time could be changed...and Alex dies. Ben figures out that Whitmore "Changed the rules".
Somebody else mentioned why doesn't Desmond remember what Faraday told him at the Hatch until so many years later? And if Desmond meet Faraday in the past back at the university and interacted with Penny in the past....why does he still do the things that makes him end up on the island? My answer to that is Desmond's "Brian" Time Travel method is not that refined....Desmond seems to get confused, mixed up, and forgets things. I guess you can say his memory gets scrambled up with what he should know and shouldn't know at any particular point in time. Adding to the confusion is, if Desmond can change time then he's probably getting confused with alternate time lines of stuff that once happened one way but now didn't happen like that. So with so much memory scrambling going on in Desmond's mind with his form of "Brain" Time Travel....it's not hard for me to believe he just couldn't remember the discussion with Faraday at the hatch until now.
I want to throw in another theory of Time Travel I have...I mean I might as well because if the above makes no sense at all, you've probably have stopped reading by now so it doesn't matter how long this comment is! =)
So in practically every Time Travel show I've seen they always warned about never having a person interact directly with themselves in the past. They say if this happens, the universe will blow up due to the Paradox. I think there was a teaser video for Lost where in a Dharma Orientation video a rabbit almost met itself from an earlier timeline and Marvin Candle freaks out.
My conjecture is why does everybody assume the Universe will blow up if this happens. Is the Universe so fragile? Did the "Cosmic Overmind" (as AstroJones calls it) didn't see it coming or didn't prepare for it? My theory is the Universe doesn't blow up, the "Cosmic Overmind" saw it coming and has figured it all out already. The Time Traveler in this example was always meant to interact with themselves in the past. This is following the reasoning that there is no choice and everything is fated.
Now lets just say I was wrong....and there is an explosion or something really really bad when the above example happens. Are we to expect the Universe is so fragile that the whole Universe would blow up....like this sort of thing has never happened before anywhere anytime? I don't know about that...the Universe is a pretty big and vast place. That's like saying when car crashes on the highway, the whole highway blows up forever...never to be usable again. I don't think it works like that. I think the damaging effects would have a range limit, and the damage might not be all encompassing. My analogy would be like a nuke going off....a wide area would be completely leveled...but the whole planet is not destroyed. Also there would be some structures and people which would have survive in the blast area. I would expect anybody who had practically no knowledge of the capabilities of a nuke would be scared and assume the whole world could be blown up by a single nuke. Of course we know better, one nuke doesn't destroy the whole world. However this may be analogous to why people think a Time Traveler meeting their earlier self would blow up the Universe.
Okay with that being said....how does this relate to Lost? Well lets say if a Time Traveler meeting their earlier self does do damage in some form. But what if the damage is not an explosive type of damage like a nuke going off. What if the properties of time just gets really screwed up. And like the Nuke analogy where there could be survivors and structures intact, what if there's pockets of area around the island which were not damaged and some more damaged than others. This could explain some of the weird stuff going on Island....like how the island is time shifted from the rest of the world.
Okay enough of my ramblings...probably none of it makes any sense anyways. LOL! =)
Now THAT makes sense!
Wow, excellent article. Excellent examples -- particularly the Hitler one. You really know your stuff! And you explain it well, too. You should be a teacher.
Didn't Ben say "Destiny is a fickle b...." (or was it something other than 'destiny', I just woke up and my brain is fuzzy...) Could this mean something along the lines of your tunnel analogy? It happens, but then along comes someone like Desmond and randomly changes something, making something that seems solid wood suddenly seem fickle?
I'm impressed! Thanks for giving us such clear examples.
Great article! 100% agree!! AND... you used an excellent picture - from the series The Time Tunnel from the mid-60's. I remember watching this as a kid. Very similar to Quantum Leap, in that they keep jumping to different times and dealing with what confronts them. And YES, they can change history in the process!! So in an unsuspecting way, you confirm my proposal they our Losties can too!
Thanks Juggy. If it helped you, I'm satisfied. And I know that you love the show. ;)
Thanks Astro! I asked him to write a response to my article and he had it done in about 2 hours. He is good.
The thing is I really enjoy the show and watching it. The time traveling does not bother me during the show. It gets to me when I am trying to figure things out and come up with theories on the show.
But this helped a lot!!
I couldn't have said it better myself Astro, well done.
I am absolutely a SciFi fan and my favorite movies/TV Shows/Star Trek episodes are the time travel ones. I don't ever worry about paradox's. I understand them and why they give people grief, but I just choose to ignore the problem. Hey, we suspend our beliefs for so many other outlandish things, why get hung up on this one thing. Personally, I think it's a great way to show the history of the island. Sure they could have used the "Flash Back" method, but that was getting old. I love the idea that the story of the island is going to be told with our Losties involved. What's even more neat is the fact that we may find out that a lot of the stuff that happen on the show (that we thought seemed random at the time) may very well end up being a direct result of the Losties time travel. Richard's visit to Locke as a child is an example of that. It will be fun to make all of the connections. I'm confident that the story line that we know will NOT change, only that it may have been a result of the Losties time travel (unknown to us at the time it was originally told). Hence the rules (from our prespective, at least) will not be broken. The Losties will not change time as we've have understood it. I'm not going to worry about any "original" time line and I suggest you not worry about it either. Unless, of course, it you enjoy that sort of thing.
Just think how fun it will be when Locke gets to meet the crew of the Black Rock. Or Adam and Eve (the 2 bodies in the cave), what if that is in fact 2 of the Losties (nooooo....) Or the real Henry Gale... Just think of the possiblities!!! I'm so excited!!!!!
This is a brilliant write-up regardless if it plays out this way our not. Thanks for taking the time to share your speculations.
I would be great to get your take on "The Rules" as Ben has stated them to Widmore in terms of him changing them and what that means in the flow of what you wrote here.
Thanks.
Amen. What amazes me is that when this is all over, with the acting, writing, and high production value, this is going to be more like a freaking 120 hour movie!
im not understanding all the hatred for the new direction... i thnk this is the best season yet. and ive seen every episode at least 35 times each. literally. so i know what im talkign about when it comes to LOST. what i dont get is how all these people are talkign smack abouthow its going sci-fi... where the hell did u think it woudl go???? honestly if youre throwing stones at the show... lets see you come up with somethign better!!! all these babies that whine are out here hatein. just love the show for what it is.. and entertaining show. if you let loose your predetermined and overthinking hopes for the show, and just enjoy it. ya therell be holes.. the writers are brilliant but they arent perfect. LOST is the best written show on tv today, you could never come up with anythign better... so just roll with it.
I wrote this in an attempt to explain the “rules” of time travel as being presented in Lost right now, and as being interpreted by me. However, I actually don’t think that what we’ve been led to believe about the rules are entirely correct. I think that things CAN be changed in the Lost universe, and possibly HAVE been changed, and the show ultimately will be about fixing it all. However, this theory, or concept only confuses the current “rules” further, which is why I left it out of the article above. So please don’t feel the need to try to convince me in the comments that they can change things. Because while I think the rules do exist for most people, I also think that there is some way to change those rules or to break them, and it’s happening on Lost. Whether its Desmond, Widmore, or some one/thing else, rules have been broken.
Oh, and if you want to read a properly done time travel story, check this out! http://www.thetrickshot.com/archive.php