The Future

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Perry
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The Future

Post by Perry »

I'm with Claude on the concept of "The future".
Don't know how to explain some of the seemingly paradoxical things but I don't see how Desmond's flashes caused by the failsafe are "the future" when they didn't happen.

Justin
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Re: The Future

Post by Justin »

It is just a semantic issue. I could just use another word for what I'm talking about. I do think that whenever I think about "the future", I am thinking about what actually will happen, but I am also thinking about how what I do will affect what will happen. I am thinking about "possible futures" or "things that might happen".
Suppose that you decide to do X, and X makes P true, and suppose that if you had not done X, P would not be true. (You can let X be "wash my car" and P be "my
car is clean" for example). It is in this sense that I want to say you "change the future" from a future where P is not true, to a future where P is true. As a result, it does seem to be the case that we "change the future" all the time, in the sense I mean. This trivializes "changing the future" in the same way I complain that calling "the future" "what will happen" trivializes "the future". Oh well. This is, to me, the natural way to think about the future. Words can be used in different ways, and I just want this to be one of the ways.

Jen
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Re: The Future

Post by Jen »

Justin wrote:It is just a semantic issue. I could just use another word for what I'm talking about. I do think that whenever I think about "the future", I am thinking about what actually will happen, but I am also thinking about how what I do will affect what will happen. I am thinking about "possible futures" or "things that might happen".
Suppose that you decide to do X, and X makes P true, and suppose that if you had not done X, P would not be true. (You can let X be "wash my car" and P be "my
car is clean" for example). It is in this sense that I want to say you "change the future" from a future where P is not true, to a future where P is true. As a result, it does seem to be the case that we "change the future" all the time, in the sense I mean. This trivializes "changing the future" in the same way I complain that calling "the future" "what will happen" trivializes "the future". Oh well. This is, to me, the natural way to think about the future. Words can be used in different ways, and I just want this to be one of the ways.
are you by any chance a mathematician?
can you two refer to your different uses of the term as lowercase the future v The Future?

muttonboy
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Re: The Future

Post by muttonboy »

I loved the episode (perhaps just caught up in the pace of it) but now that I've listened to the Lowdown I'm torn. (Can I somehow go back in time and not listen to the Lowdown, and thus my opinion of the episode will remain VERY high, as opposed to MODERATELY high?) Despite everything, I'm just worried now that LOST is going into those waters that will really muddle everything. I mean, the can't just say in an interview that they won't allow paradoxes then create the potential for paradoxes via Time Travel (the rat dying still bugs me). Ugh! Now whenever I think about the show I find myself thinking, "Yeah but, uh, errrr..."

(Regarding the Bracelet in The Economist: if it is true that 'a bracelet is just a bracelet', and all that was intended by having an identical bracelet on two 'mysterious' women (and that Sayid clearly looks at said bracelets with some sort of interest that is passed onto us, the viewers) is for an internal emotional attachment for Sayid, then I have lost faith in the writers. HOW CAN THEY THINK, GIVEN HOW DEEP THE STORIES GO, AND GIVEN HOW DEEP WE ARE WILLING TO GO WITH IT, THAT WE WOULDN'T THINK SOMETHING MORE ABOUT THE WOMEN WHO WORE THOSE BRACELETS? Even people I know who watch the show and amazingly don't know what the "Black Rock" is or who this 'Mr Widmore' is, think something is up with Elise and Naomi, and that they are tied together.)

Perry
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Re: The Future

Post by Perry »

Justin wrote:It is just a semantic issue. I could just use another word for what I'm talking about. I do think that whenever I think about "the future", I am thinking about what actually will happen, but I am also thinking about how what I do will affect what will happen. I am thinking about "possible futures" or "things that might happen".
Suppose that you decide to do X, and X makes P true, and suppose that if you had not done X, P would not be true. (You can let X be "wash my car" and P be "my
car is clean" for example). It is in this sense that I want to say you "change the future" from a future where P is not true, to a future where P is true. As a result, it does seem to be the case that we "change the future" all the time, in the sense I mean. This trivializes "changing the future" in the same way I complain that calling "the future" "what will happen" trivializes "the future". Oh well. This is, to me, the natural way to think about the future. Words can be used in different ways, and I just want this to be one of the ways.
I agree that it is just semantics but I feel that the future is concrete and that you are merely "creating" or "choosing" a future through your actions and are not "changing" anything.

David3
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Re: The Future

Post by David3 »

A wise man once said, "your future hasn't been written yet, no one's has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one."

Claude
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Re: The Future

Post by Claude »

I like to think of the past, present, and future in as simple terms as possible. The past is what happened, the present is what is happening, and the future is what will happen. While I understand Justin's contention, I just don't buy that the future can be something that doesn't happen. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't exist, and therefore shouldn't be the future. It's like saying the present can be something other than what is happening now. Sure, the present could be that we're under attack by aliens. But we're not. So it's not the present. If we were, then it'd be the present.

Sure, Desmond's flashes could be a possible future. Things that will happen if he doesn't intervene. But the mere fact of his intervention dictates the outcomes, i.e., the future. I think visions of the future can too easily be counted as part of the chain of events that lead to a specific future. How can it be argued that Desmond's flashes weren't designed to ensure the future that we witnessed?

Like I said on the podcast, Justin's view means that every decision we make changes the future. I agree, that trivializes it. I'd content that decisions we make "create" the future, or ensure the future as it's "supposed" to happen.

I don't think we have as much control over the course of events in our lives as we think we do. Sure, I believe we have free will. But if I decide to run a red light, I think I would have always decided to run the red light, at that moment, unless something changes, say, a cop from the future comes to me and tells me that if I run the red light, he's going to be there to give me a ticket. (What a nice cop for warning me!) Well, now that piece of information will now influence my decision-- and I won't run the light. The future "was" that I ran the light. But I didn't. It doesn't exist. The future "is" that I don't run the light.

I think the idea that we can change the future is just an illusion. Just like the illusion that we can make any choice at any given moment. While it seems true, you will only make one choice, and if you had the perspective to step out of our space-time continuum, you'd see yourself make that choice, and always make that choice in those specific circumstances, sans outside inflence. (Now, random occurance surely comes into play, but let's not think about that.)

Unless you operate under the idea that the future already exists (like the past), I don't see how you can change it, since what you're changing doesn't happen. But if the future is yet to happen, then whatever happens (visions of the future, et al.) will only leads to a series of events that will in fact be the future. So you didn't change anything, you just caused something to happen that you didn't know was going to happen.

Maybe when someone travels to the past and changes something, a new space-time is created. The old future does exist, but we now live in a new one, where the future expands as planned until a new interruption. But given just one universe/dimension, I'm sticking with my semantics-ridden theory.

My longest post ever....

Perry
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Re: The Future

Post by Perry »

Perry wrote:I'm with Claude on the concept of "The future".
Like I said before, I'm with Claude. Nice explanation there.

Justin
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Re: The Future

Post by Justin »

Since we're using the words in different ways, there isn't really a debate here.

To boil it down to 2 statments:

1. Our actions affect what happens (or The Future).
2. We have a choice in our actions.

This is essentially what I mean when I say we can change the future. I consider these statements to be uncontroversial.

evephoenix
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Re: The Future

Post by evephoenix »

Justin wrote:Since we're using the words in different ways, there isn't really a debate here.

To boil it down to 2 statments:

1. Our actions affect what happens (or The Future).
2. We have a choice in our actions.

This is essentially what I mean when I say we can change the future. I consider these statements to be uncontroversial.
I totally agree. To bring in a totally unrelated example to illustrate how I think about it, I work with Tarot. (Yeah, yeah, I remember "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," but that's not how I work! lol Although, with enough money, I guess you can rig anything.) Since I believe that the future is not written in stone, that we have free will and we do affect the future, I use them to highlight what is likely to be influences for me or other people, kind of like a cosmic Rorshach (sp?) test. I don't think I can know that a particular thing WILL happen, no matter what I do. I do think there is a general direction we can go in that is for our highest good, but we still have choices.

To use Desmond's story an another example, maybe it was for his highest good to go to the island, and if the universe "course corrects," maybe he would have ended up there eventually even if he had not chosen to participate in the race, or someone else would have. But he DID chose that course, based on what Mrs. Hawking told him that obviously made sense to him in some way. The way she explained it was a little bit confusing to me though, and probably was more to convince him to work toward what would be best for everybody rather than to tell him it doesn't matter what he chose. If if really didn't matter, maybe she would not have talked to him in the first place. Her intervention tells me that his choice - his exercising his free will - was necessary. Anywhat, that's just my two cents.

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