Fearless Prediction: You can’t change that which is observed. [Nutty Whisper Explanation Included!]
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By karmavore
- Fearless Prediction: You can’t change that which is observed. [Nutty Whisper Explanation Included!]
- Created: Aug 6, 2008
- Last updated: Aug 14, 2008
- After episode: 4.13: There’s No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3
- Status: Current
- Flag this theory:
If you observe and record something, it is locked in and cannot be changed by a time-traveler.
— karmavore
As Bill Safire says, “you can’t win if you don’t play”. So here’s a fun theory that is perhaps more truthy than truthful.
We already know that time travel can change the past, and that course corrections can change it back, if necessary. We know Desmond changed something (but what?) when he got hit by the cricket bat, and we definitely know that he managed to communicate Penny’s telephone number from the past up to 2004. Ms. Hawking explained the rules of course correction, but I suspect that she may have left something out.
Consider the Other’s fixation with cameras. I’m given the impression that Ben spent many hours reviewing those tapes. DHARMA, too, had many cameras all over, including scientists who needed to record everything they see and send the notebooks far away via pneumatic tube. Remember Cindy? “They have us watch,” she said. “Watch what?!” asked Jack. What, indeed.
Coming back to reality for a moment, quantum physics tells us that we can’t simultaneously know a particle’s position and velocity. Under some interpretations, particles can occupy two different locations at the same time. However, if you try observe the particle, it “locks” into one particular place and time (but you had to knock a photon off it to see it, so now you don’t know its velocity).
Given the three paragraphs above, here’s my wild-arse theory: If you observe and keep a record of something, it is locked in and cannot be changed by a time-traveler. This is the reason that DHARMA set up so many viewing stations; they didn’t want their time travel experiments affecting the past. This is the reason Ben follows his cameras so closely. He knows that Widmore is coming for him, and he wants to “lock in” as much Island history as he can muster.
Now, to take my wild-arse theory and make it even wildly arsier… What if the whispers are observers from a future that they would like to keep? So, given the rules above, they travel back, using technology to keep themselves unseen, and witness the critical moments that lead to their timeline. I mean, be honest, there are two or three worse theories on this board. :)
Bizarrely, if you think of the Pierre Chang video, this principle works even better.
In that video he discussed how he knows about the future of Dharma - the purge, and that he’ll lose his arm by the look he gives it. He claims he knows this by a source.
Now, if this source went ahead in time and saw these events play out, by the rules of your theory here that makes those events ‘locked’. As such, Pierre Chang is in a position where he knows he cannot change the future. . .
Mind, that does seem like ‘course correction’ given another name!
(As for ‘the whispers’ being people from the future… I’ve just come off the back of looking into it all and reaching the conclusion that they are voices of the ‘deceased’ in some form or other, so the only way that works for me is if they are the future voices from an alternate universe. Good luck trying to get that into your show, Lindehof and Cuse!)
Who is Pierre Chang?
interesting theory -That could also be why he is always so sure of himself, because he has “fixed things’ by watching them to know it wont change… and Maybe that is why Ben was so shocked when his “daughter” died…
Pierre Chang owns a successful chain of Chinese Restaurants.
Great theory, love it, +1. I was wondering where the F you were going with it then my eyes lit up and I got a little surprise, good one.