LOST-Theories.com

Good work. +1

I wouldn’t say my theory was popular at all. I think I got 50/50 in terms of votes. If that’s popular, then I guess it was, but I didn’t think so.

I appreciate your passionate input and I’m sorry you felt that I was perpetuating some sort of “rumor mill” as you put it so clearly in your title. I never thought that it would be read, let alone influence anyone in particular. I’m also sorry that you felt I misused the producer’s statements in my arguement.

You obviously very strongly disagree with me, and that’s fine. 1/2 the people who voted on my post disagreed. Besides, most of the comments involved my presentation and grammar, not my content. Believe me when I say I was not patting myself on the back.

Not really much else to say. Good day to you.

Thanks Billy. I’m sorry to have singled you out. Yours was just the theory that made me realize where everyone was getting this idea that there can’t be time travel on the show. There are a ton of people on here that share that same view and comment on theories like mine and others that they couldn’t be true because they are too “sci fi” and viewers would never accept it. There are some amazing ideas on here that are quickly discounted for this reason and I just had to defend them. Not to pick on you. In fact, other than your anti time travel ideas I liked your theory.

I guess I did have something else to add. Maybe I’m generalizing wormholes in the scientific sense.

I do agree with the vile vortex theories that have cropped up. They explain how a plane from Nigeria could end up on an island on the other side of the world. They also explain how people could physically travel from place to place instantaneously, in the case of Juliet arriving on the island or Tom going to see Michael, for example.

I just differentiate this from the idea that a wormhole, for lack of a better word, would allow people to travel through time.

Like I implied in my original post, I’m not Stephen Hawking, so maybe I should never have presumed to understand that which is beyond my understanding.

Anyhow… thanks again for the passionate counterpoints. I’ll be reading your other theories as soon as I wake up tomorrow.

Damn these comment delays. Had I waited another 2 minutes I could have responded to your response.

Nah, I didn’t feel like you were picking on me, even though you singled out my name, post and several quotes. Hehe :) I welcome the intelligent debate. It’s a shame to see some poorly thought out theories skyrocket to fame and equally disappointing to see well thought out theories get pushed to the gutter by the misguided. I certainly didn’t mean to do that to you or others. I know there are a lot of people who theorize, believe and insist that time travel, in the traditional sense of the term, is the perfect explanation for the show.

I guess, in retrospect to yours and other comments, that I didn’t do a very good job, despite the tremendous length of my post, explaining how I was interpretting the producer’s statements. I think that when they use the term time travel it’s more of the way it worked in “The Watchmen” - that they refer to the way Desmond travels - and that’s not necessarly going to grant someone the ability to change the past, present or future events of the LOST timeline. I was trying, and clearly failed, to point out that I think Desmond is “viewing” time simultaneously and that this is what the producer’s refer to as “time travel.”

Despite my rational attempts to justify there is no time travel, it is all based on my emotional investment in the show, as are many theories across the internet. I just don’t buy into the “So and so will go back in time and fix everything” theories. I think the producers and writers are more creative than that.

“The Constant” is also my favorite episode. I loved the Butterfly Effect also. It’s one of my favorite popcorn movies.

Again, thanks for the intelligent and courteous debate. But now I really am going to sleep. I’ll look over the other theories you linked as well as your previous ones, tomorrow.

Despite you saying you hate Star Wars (how could you!) I’ll give you a +1.

I liked Billy’s post, and I think his anti-paradox argument (that, basically, there is the possibility to travel through time mentally but nothing can ultimately change the major events that have occurred past, present or future) is a strong one.

I believe you could be right. ‘Wormholes’ - as in some form of passageway rift that can send you to one point of space into another point of space without travelling the distance between the two points - may exist, too - and these don’t have to have anything to do with time and so both your idea and Billy’s idea can exists alongside each other perfectly well.

Great debate between the two of you. Mature and intelligent. Rare stuff these days.

I also think there’s more to the time travel issue than just mind travel such as with Desmond. I think it’s a given that Desmonds’ ability is due to his close proximity at the time of the hatch implosion, but there’s still the issue of the island itself, which is one big anomoly. If past, present and future all exist at the same and in the same space, then given the islands’ uniqueness, there could be hot spots where whatever barrier exists thins out to allow passage from one to the other.

Thanks for the exact quote from the producers (which I’ve also seen, but I thought from all the comments here there must have been a previous denial of time travel).

In essence, only the character’s consciousness can “travel” back and forward in time. The physical person doesn’t travel at all.

Even so, I don’t think, from a logical point of view, that the paradox is avoided. For example, Desmond mind-time travels back to Penny four years earlier and tells her to wait for his call on Christmas Eve, 2004, and not ever to change her phone number. Whether the producers like it or not, this DOES change the course of events. For all we know Penny may have changed her number, or gone out to a Christmas Party that night, rather than stay home alone waiting for the call. To say that “the Universe has a way of course correcting” is just a convenient way of escaping the fact that actual events have been changed.

Similarly, when Desmond prevents Charlie’s death multiple times - resulting in Charlie sacrificing himself to deactivate the radio-blocking beacon on the Looking Glass - had Desmond not intervened, Charlie might have died much earlier, and then who would have accomplished the task of allowing the island to be be accessible to wireless communications?

There is no logical explanation for this plot device. We can accept it as it is, for what it is, a plot device, not as any sort of scientifically or even logically satisfying phenomenon.

I agree with you Veefre. It seems people CAN change the past, just not the flash backs that we’ve seen.

Example: Faraday’s journal and the new words in it…”If anything goes wrong Desmond will be my constant.”

This example makes me believe that some things we’ve seen happen in flashbacks (like coincidences that made certain people get on the plane) may later be explained as caused by someone time traveling. I think that this whole “fate” thing will come into play big time when we see that a person or people were MEANT to change the past all along. That the time travel was fated to happen.

I didn’t include this in my theory because I know I’d catch a lot of dissent for this and it is more speculative than my post. Although I may as well have because no one seems to agree with me anyway.

Good points, Raveon.

As a skeptical sometimes scientist, I’m generally turned off by stories that attempt to claim scientific backing for plot devices that are clearly fantasy, supernatural, or just plain fiction. Thus, when Stephen King has the devil himself appear in a cloud wrecking havoc on a small town, it doesn’t arouse my skepticism, as it’s clearly a work of fantasy. But when a story attempts to present as various pyschic phenomena as scientfic fact, and none of it really adds up, then I get a bit cynical.

I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think all the loose ends in this show will ever be neatly tied up. They’ve opened up far too many Pandoran boxes for that to happen. I still love the show, and look forward to each episode, but I’m no longer searching for any single unifying theory as to why all this is supposedly taking place - at least no theory that can be deduced from the current evidence presented and logical deduction.

I suspect the writers/producers have come up against the same wall. Hence the devotion of most of Season 2 and a sizeable amount of 1 and 3 to “character development”. That is, various romances, squabbles, and connections that really don’t have anything to do with the overall plot. But they keep the masses entertained in the absence of a general basis for understanding what is happening to the main characters.

This post deserves more +1’s because it is an intelligent and thought provoking debate on the different perscpectives viewers have on the show. Isn’t that the point of the site?

I have to put my two cents in and agree with veefre and raven. Regardless of what the producers have suggested; paradoxes are created and major events are changed even with mind travel. Let’s take Desmond, himself, as an example. In the Constant, Desmond changed the future by saving his own life. If he did not use his “mind travels” to contact Penny, his mind would have exploded and he would have died. I’ll take the debate one step further and suggest Mrs. Hawkins in a liar! The Universe does not always “course correct.” If it does, then Desmond is also doomed!

It also seems to me that these “travels” have to somehow be used to CHANGE something for the greater good, or what’s the point? Why introduce time or mind travel at all, if it doesn’t benefit the lives of the characters on the show?

Great debate! +1

excellent theory and debate. I think I have to disagree with this theory, and the comments that state the future is being changed. I think what the writers are doing is telling us that when Des goes into the past and tells Penny not to change her number, that’s what was supposed to happen. Basically, I am asserting that the universe already accounts for any time travel. That is the simplest way to avoid any paradoxes. Each time each person travels, then fate already knows what that person is going to do.

lockeko, that is my whole point. That the universe expects the time travel to occur. I do not think that anything we’ve seen in the flash forwards or flash backs will change at all (this is in my theory). I do think that we will see an awesome flashback that shows us how previous events that we’ve already seen (all those weird preflight coincidences) were orchestrated by time travel.

raven, my disagreement, while poorly worded on my part was more with the comments about whether or not the past, present, or future is changed by the time travel. In my opinion, the past, present, and future are not really changeable, in a macro-view, —even if individual changes occur.

raven,

What you’re suggesting is not unlikely. And I think this is where my disagreement stemmed from in the beginning, through my wordy and bloated posts. If the producers are suggesting that Desmond, and possibly others like Mrs. Hawking or Brother Campbell, are capable of viewing time simultaneously, they could manipulate events to lead to an end game. It’s certainly been done in other films, but always with a traditional time travel method and/or device. But accepting that implies that there is some grand scheme perpetrated by all-knowing individuals like Mrs. Hawking.

That’s where I differ. I think that even though someone may have the ability to “experience” time non-linearly the actions they take during their experiences are predestined. It’s simply my emotional aversion to traditional time travel, which gives someone the power to choose the fate of others and the world.

Even so, the two ideas are not contradictory. That is to say that, time travel, even through paradox, may explain how everyone’s destinies are intertwined through a series of circumstancial cause and effect, while not handing over power to any one person or group of persons. That would be an enormous literary challenge on the part of the writers, but I believe it could be pulled off. And, that I would like it.

Talking about this is fun for me.

lockeko: I think the problem we are running into is the term “changeable.” I don’t think the past is changeable in the sense that a person could go back and kill Hitler to stop the Holocaust. I think it is changeable in the sense that had Desmond never gone back in time, the writing in Faraday’s notebook would never have existed. This is a “change” in events b/c without Desmond’s time traveling they would not have occurred. In my opinion the universe has a “plan” and it “knows” that people are going to time travel on the island and even uses this fact to carry out its grand scheme.

Billy: That would be a very cool end to the show. And I think it will explain things like Adam and Eve and the black and white marbles. The show needs a theme and I think fate is going to be it. It’s already playing a bigger and bigger role. Michael couldn’t kill himself. He couldn’t disrupt the plan (fate.) Also consider Charlie’s death circumstances and that whole speech from Ms. Hawking.

Don’t read the rest of this comment if you don’t want a spoiler of the next episode, but apparently in the next Locke centric episode, they film his birth scene. And reports from people on set have said that Richard Alpert is there! How crazy is that?

http://spoilerslost.blogspot.com/ (scroll down to the headline: Episode 4x11)

Billy G Oat,

Regarding your comment:

“That’s where I differ. I think that even though someone may have the ability to “experience” time non-linearly the actions they take during their experiences are predestined. It’s simply my emotional aversion to traditional time travel, which gives someone the power to choose the fate of others and the world. ”

1. Predestined by whom?

2. Ironically, that person you speak of is Mrs. Hawkings. She seems to be the “safeguard” and is the very person you don’t want her to be. She DOES seem to have the power to change the fate of others. If all is predestined, why the need for her intervention at all?

3. Again, why introduce the notion of Desmond’s time travel, if nothing can be changed? What’s the point?

alice1,

1) “Predestined by whom?”

Well, the obvious answer to that would be a higher power. Be it God, or some other form of spiritual diety, such as “the universe” as seen by many eastern religions. Spirituality has played a large role in the characters choices right down to the name Dharma. Nevertheless, you could argue God’s plan would likely not involve giving some Scottish drunk the ability to see time.

2) “If all is predestined, why the need for intervention at all?”

I feel Mrs. Hawking is just a literary tool that helps explain Desmond’s role in the universe. She is the witches to Desmond’s MacBeth. She’s Yoda to Desmond’s Luke. She’s the Oracle to Desmond’s Neo. As used in traditional and contemporary stories, these sages have some wisdom and forsight which guide a main character toward his conflict, and ultimately his redemption.

3) “Again, why introduce the notion of Desmond’s time travel, if nothing can be changed? What’s the point?”

I hope to put into words what I have yet to be able to thusfar. The point to me is that Desmond is the direct cause of the crash of flight 815. It’s his failure to push the button that caused the immediate death of 253 human beings and countless others who died later. And nothing done in the show, by any other character on the show, has been shown to have such a tragic and immediate effect on the characters lives as Desmond’s actions. And turning the failsafe key is no form of redemption. If anything, it seems to have put the survivors in even greater peril than before. It is his actions, and his actions alone, which have resulted in the show we watch now regardless of how many “connections” the other survivors have to one another.

Desmond’s path is intertwined with that of every single person on the island simply because he didn’t stay with Penny. Compare that with Jack’s or Juliet’s guilt over the loss of a patient, Sawyers and John’s daddy issues, Hurley’s guilt induced weight problems… they aren’t even in the same league.

Will he gain some knowledge through visions of a “possible” future or through visits to his “predestined past” which help him redeem himself in the eyes of the universe, thus saving the entire planet from an undertemined apocolypse? I sure hope so.

I know I’m probably wrong and that in a few short weeks we’ll have a better understanding of how the writer’s are going to use time travel in future episodes. We’ll learn much more as uncover Richard Alpert’s identity and motives. There’s probably some “stargate” that opens a door to any place in time or space where people can manipulate events, past, present and future with seemingly little or no consequence. Then Jack and Kate will probably go back in time, stop some mysterious event on the island and live out their days in happiness and harmony, dying in a cave. It’s sweet and romantic, but it’s just not interesting to me.

Ravenontheleft,

It’s interesting how we can agree on many themes, and yet disagree on how those themes fundamentally apply to the show’s characters. To me, it’s less about theory and becomes more about how we as individuals connect with the characters, themes and events on the show.. That’s why I like the show. Science, religion, free will, fate… It doesn’t take sides… it leaves it out there for debate. And this has been a very fun debate for me. :)

Ravenontheleft,

It’s interesting how we can agree on many themes, and yet disagree on how those themes fundamentally apply to the show’s characters. To me, it’s less about theory and becomes more about how we as individuals connect with the characters, themes and events on the show.. That’s why I like the show. Science, religion, free will, fate… It doesn’t take sides… it leaves it out there for debate. And this has been a very fun debate for me.

This theory and comments are the best in ages. Kudos to Raven and Billy and all the other commenters. Bravo.

You may be right Billy G,

but how disappointing it would be to learn that Desmond’s special gift, his ability to experience time in a non-linear fashion, granted to him by the universe itself, has been introduced only as a false hope. That nothing Dez can do or say, in his mind traveling escapades, can change anything for the better.

A life of doom and gloom for our Losties? Why not? Bring it on. They deserve it anyway don’t they? What a bunch of losers!

It’s sad and tragic, (and everything we may see in a Stephen King novel) but it’s just not interesting to me. I, for one, am rooting for the “Scottish drunk” to make a difference!

raven,

Rereading this I think I finally understand what you are saying… That time travel exists but is predestined to occur. That even if someone changed something, it was meant to occur. I can reluctantly buy into that because my aversion to the form of traditional time travel is one in which someone is granted unsupervised access to space/time.

If I’m reading you correctly, time travel is being used as a “tool” by “god/the universe/fate” and the people involved are just extensions of that tool? Is that what you’re getting at? That time travel in and of itself will become a tool of “the universe” for course correction? If so, I am far less stubborn of the idea. In fact, it gives further evidence to my theories on Desmond. :)

As for Daniel’s notebook, maybe I missed something. I walked away from that episode thinking that when Daniel parts ways with Desmond, he realizes that he needs to move from rats to human subjects in order to futher understand his research. It would be unethical to test anyone but himself but he knows he will need a constant. From his conversation with Desmond that they will meet in 2004, he decides that Desmond will be his constant, presuming that nothing he does with his machine will change their meeting. He begins testing the device on himself, causing long term memory damage. Though I don’t recall Desmond mentioning the plane crash, this may be the reason he’s so upset about the news. He goes to the island where he discovers Desmond, eventually remembers the entry in the notebook and after a long search he finds it, creating the constant he needed all along.

I did not get the impression that the note did not exist prior to 2004 or that it appeared on the page as he was reading it. I got the impression that Daniel didn’t “remember” it was there until his conversation with Desmond on the freighter. Was the page shown quoteless prior to that scene?

ozzig,

I agree that the island, which has clearly been shown to exist outside of known time somehow, will play a role in the “time travel” aspects of the show. I’m just leery of there being some “fix the present by changing the past” element. If I were asked to theorize about the island I’d suggest that with the implosion of the hatch, the island’s electromagnetic properties are becoming more and more unstable.

It’s possible we may be seeing the collapse of a gravitational hotspot and/or the creation of an miniature event horizon, both of which could have apocolyptic effects on the earth and/or universe. But that is contradictary of what Mrs. Hawking says. She implies that Desmond’s pushing of the button and eventual turning of the failsafe key are what leads to the prevention of such an apocolyptic event. Presumably the island must be discovered in order to prevent something. After this implosion, Penny is able to locate the island and Widmore shows up days later with his freighter. I hadn’t given it much thought before.

What if Dharma was close to altering the Valenzetti equation before Ben’s purge? Ben was no leader among Dharma and wouldn’t be privy to the true nature of their experiments. It may be why he believed that the button had no purpose, encouraging John to stop pushing it.

What if Widmore isn’t so bad? We’ve so far disliked him only because of his own dislike of Desmond.

What if he discovered that Dharma’s failure was the result of Ben’s purge and not some collective scientific failure as Thomas Mittelwerk pointed out? Widmore has been tied to the Hanso Foundation, and by proxy Dharma. He did buy the Black Rock’s logbook and he did have a island inspired painting in his office.

What if the team selected to come to the island are there to continue Dharma’s research and prevent a worldwide disaster? They knew of the Tempest Station and its deadly gas which was presumed to be used in the purge. Did Ben’s man, who was captured by Widmore, give up this info?

What if Jacob is also trying to promote the island’s discovery and John has misinterpreted his “calling” by falling victim to Ben’s manipulations? Hurley says, “I should have never went with John. It wants us to come back.”

What if a pipe is just a pipe and everything we’ve come to know about Widmore is a clever manipulation of our emotions? Ben’s certainly not been truthful about much of anything and we only have his word, and Michael’s note to Sayid about the captain, that Widmore is up to no good. From transcripts we know that Mittlewerk cured someone of cancer, just as Ben was assumed to cure Juliet’s sister’s cancer. Is it possible that Ben became a follower of Mittlewerk’s methods and ideology, leading the island’s inhabitants into less than important avenues of development? Richard Alpert is suspect of Ben’s leadership and implies that he is wasting time with the fertility research and that there are more important things to pursue.

Veefre,

I understand your skepticism and how you differentiate fantasy from science. However, I find it fun to examine this stuff despite most of it being beyond my comprehension. Noone presumes to know where the writers get their ideas and how they use them in the show. In fact, I accept, even if I don’t believe in, the supernatural elements of the show despite not being able to explain them.

It’s that perspective which gives me great joy to discuss your points about paradoxes existing regardless of how characters time travel. What I’m continue to imply is that Desmond cannot effect events by changing the past because he’s experiencing all time simultaneously. How I apply this to logic seems backward and is difficult to explain.

Mrs. Hawking says, “Never done this before, have you? I can always tell the first timers.” This can be inferred to mean it’s the first time Desmond is “time traveling”. But I suggest that it means exactly what she says. It’s his first, and only time attempting to buy the ring. For example, we know that Desmond joins the military from an earlier flashback and it is generally accepted not to be a time traveling flashback. Yet it appears to be Mrs. Desmond’s very conversation which causes him to have second thoughts about Penny, forcing him to pause as he passes the recruiting office, thus convincing him to join the military.

There is no “other time” when Desmond does things differently. Why would he not remember this conversation with Mrs. Hawking in the present? His mind just cannot wrap itself around a non-linear timeline until he obtains his constant. Not to mention he was hit pretty hard in the noggin by a cricket bat. Now that he has a constant he begin to understand time as a non-linear and instanteous event, which is neither past, nor future. It is just now.

Surely, his premonitions of Charlie must show his ability to change events, as you pointed out. But I believe, since this is prior to his gaining a constant, that he sees events which are possible to occur, not necessarly accurate, because they are presented in pieces and change as he attempts to effect them. By preventing Charlie’s deaths, he’s not creating events which require course correction, but instead inadvertantly course correctiing them making them destined to occur and without paradox. Does that make sense? I don’t think I can explain it differently.

I do agree with you that we probably won’t get explanations for many of the mysteries on the show. I think once they found out the series was long term they began to draw out the mythology beats to allow for more character development beats, which are of far less interest to me. They also have to be more and more careful as the approach the end of the series to reveal less and less of the mysteries in order to keep us watching to the end.

alice1,

I agree… it would be horribly disappointing to me if Desmond isn’t given an opportunity for redemption. I truly hope the writers have bigger plans for Desmond, as Brother Campbell put it, and they include more than button pushing and key turning.

But as you pointed out, doom and gloom seems inevitable for most of the survivors. Arguably, only Eko, Charlie, Sun and Jin (and maybe Bernard and Rose to a degree) have really come to terms with their guilt, mistakes and failures. The rest have just whined about how bad things are and found ways to make life on a magical island unbearable.

Billy that’s a lot of whatif’s LOL !! But a lot of good points. We’ve definitely been led to believe Widmore is evil based on limited info. hasn’t everyone thus far been shown to be neither good nor evil, but in between? (Well, except for Penny, Vincent, a few others, ok)

I agree with the idea that Jacob might want the island discovered whereas Ben does not, it could even be why Ben made him a prisoner in the first place.

I feel there’s an imminent disaster in store for the island that could very well rely on the island being found in order to be prevented, while Ben might prefer the disaster to having the island in the hands of others (not his others).

Billy: Yes! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. That the time travel is predestined. This way, nothing is changing per se, because it was meant to happen all along.

As for Faraday’s notebook… this is really hard to explain what I mean, but bare with me. Hypothetically if Des had never had this “consciousness travel” (or whatever you want to call it), than he never would have known to go to Faraday’s lab and give him the proper setting for his machine. In this scenario, Faraday may still have figured the setting out for himself at some later date, BUT I can’t imagine that he would have written that message to himself about Desmond being his constant. He would have had no reason to because Des would not have been able to say “Hey in a few years we’ll both be on an island, bla bla bla.”

So at the very least, I can confidently say that without Desmond’s traveling the note would not have existed. This is a CHANGE in the past by definition. But this is not to say that there is some other past that existed until Desmond’s time traveling. The note always existed because the universe knew that Des was going to time travel and do what he did.

The notebook comment was meant to give an example of the way that I think wormholes will be revealed to operate in the show.

So lets say that at some future point we see Widmore use a worm hole. (calm down, this is a hypothetical and can work for any character) He goes back in time and gets Libby to give the boat to Desmond. This is an event we’ve already seen occur, but we will know HOW this coincidence occurred once we see Widmore use the wormholes. The past is not changed because it already occurred this way. The universe KNEW Widmore would do this and has allowed for this act and even fated it to happen.

Raven,

Okay. Then I get what you’re saying. I guess I was just being dense. We are, in a sense, using the same principles of predetermination to explain different ideas.

My original post, as pointed out by its title, was meant to discourage the “time travel” theories that suggest no predetermination, which is different than destiny or fate. That is to say, I do not hope to see someone go back in time and changes the events of the show. Those are the kind of theories which seem to pop up more than others. And it is those kinds of theories which prompted me to write my post.

On that note, I think we can put this debate to rest, unless anyone else has anything to add. Thanks again for the wonderful comments and the opportunity to discuss things intelligently and insightfullly. They’ve given me reason to further examine time travel as a phenomenon on LOST, which was the original intent of my own post.