A theory for LOST
I'm a huge Lost fan, and if you're not, this post likely won't mean much to you. So you can stop reading now.
Still going? Okay. I'm gonna skip over all the setup, and just assume that interested readers are familiar with the show and the mythology surrounding it. If you watch the show because you think Sawyer is hot or because you want to know who gets off the island, this probably isn't going to make any sense to you.
I read the most interesting sentence this morning...
It may be that the Island is a practical illustration of Schroedinger's Box.
This is an intriguing notion because we know that there are certainly changes in the way time and space behave on the island, and in the transition to and from the island.
But I have a slightly different take...
In the physics thought experiment, the quantum wave of the cat is indeterminate until it is collapsed by outside observation. If superposition is an accurate description of quantum reality, then wouldn't all the world be a practical illustration of Schroedinger's Box? And if that's the case, then wouldn't there need to be a point of outside observation necessary to collapse the superpositions and cause the resolution of events in the world?
What if the Island is the outside observer? What if it's somehow outside quantum reality? It's unstuck in time and space, which is why it's so hard to find. It's the observer, which is why it's treated as a consciousness. Since it is the observer of macro quantum superpositions, it can influence the outcomes by the nature of its observations. Since it exists outside some normal quantum reality, extremely unlikely events can occur there. (In that sense, it's a bit like the Heart of Gold from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- the Infinite Improbability Drive keeps on resolving incredibly unlikely events.) Since it is the observer of all the world, it makes sense that from there, you can see into anywhere at any time.
This might also explain why those that know more about the Island are obsessive about protecting it. What would happen to the universe if the single observational point which triggered the resolution of quantum superpositions fell under someone's control? What would happen if it were destroyed? Would the universe be "undone" in some way? Certainly such questions make the life or death of a single individual seem less important, don't they? And in case you didn't notice, when you start spending time on the Island, you develop a pretty cavalier attitude about living or dying.
When the show started, there was a broadly-accepted theory that the Island represented Purgatory, and that the Losties were basically dead and didn't know it. This was roundly refuted by the producers of the show. So what if there's a slightly different interpretation of the question of "alive or dead?" What if the Losties shifted from being the cat, who's superposition state is unresolved until observation, to being the observers, who's quantum state is somehow not relevant to the thought experiment?
There's another reason I think this might make sense, that has to do with the broad story mythology established by the alternate reality games run by the show's production team. There is a concept called the Valenzetti Equation, in which the 6 numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) are the constants. The Dharma Initiative was a project to somehow influence the world such that those numbers would change. If they are constants, then the only way to change them would be to alter reality itself in some way. How would you do that? You'd have to go to a place outside reality where you could alter it by observational influence.
What if I told you that, somewhere on this island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be? What would you say about that, John?
--Benjamin Linus
UPDATE: Lest anyone feel the need to correct the accuracy of my physics here.... yes, I am aware that I am using the most pop interpretations of the physics concepts here. It's a pop show, and represents the same kind of quasi-science found in comics books and Star Trek episodes
Comments
A small tangent ..... our activities may be shortening the life of the universe too.
The startling claim is made a while ago by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have. Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang.
But there is an odd feature of the theory that philosophers and scientists still argue about. In a nutshell, the theory suggests that we change things simply by looking at them and theorists have puzzled over the implications for years.
They often illustrate their concerns about what the theory means with mind-boggling experiments, notably the aforementioned Schrodinger's cat in which, thanks to a fancy experimental set up, the moggy is both alive,dead and shagging Rob McDonagh's Leg until someone decides to look, when it either carries on living, or dies. That is, by one interpretation (by another, the universe splits into two, one with a live cat and one with a dead one.)
New Scientist reported sometime ago a worrying new variant as the cosmologists claim that astronomers may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.
The damaging allegations are made by Profs Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and James Dent of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, who suggest that by making this observation in 1998 we may have caused the cosmos to revert to an earlier state when it was more likely to end. “Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life-expectancy of the universe,”
Feck!
We in Ireland have been drinking dark matter for years (its what gives Guinness it's distinctive taste and contributes to the amount of shite talked when said beverage is consumed in less than moderate quantities)
Posted by Steve McDonagh At 09:16:17 AM On 03/21/2008 | - Website - |
Has the yellow die seeped in and started to trigger some otherworldly neurons for you to come up with this?
Posted by Chris Mobley At 10:05:36 AM On 03/21/2008 | - Website - |
I'm not sure how this ties into the pregnant women dying yet. Perhaps since the Island is essentially an inversion of Schroedinger's thought experiment, it's impossible for the quantum wave of a new life to resolve, and therefore it's impossible for a fetus conceived on the island to actually achieve consciousness until it's back in the real world.
It wouldn't surprise me if there were medical reasons why a fetus that was unable to achieve a certain level of brain operation would kill the mother. Without establishing independence, it would essentially be a form of parasitical cancer.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 10:22:59 AM On 03/21/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Dan Sickles At 01:41:04 PM On 03/21/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Dan Sickles At 02:31:37 PM On 03/21/2008 | - Website - |
If by "switchable magnetic field" you mean the Swan station, I suspect that the station acted as some sort of quantum temporal anchor. The restraint of the EM energy there when the station was active kept time on the Island closer together with the rest of the world. Releasing the energy and destroying the station unhooked the anchor.
What else that means, I don't have any serious guesses on.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 03:25:52 PM On 03/21/2008 | - Website - |
One question. How were they auctioning off the ship log of a ship that crashed on the island in the 1800's? How was it recovered from the ship? Penny's dad just happend to be at the auction. Was he aware that that boat was on the island he was looking for?
Posted by Dorian At 03:52:00 PM On 03/21/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Mikkel Heisterberg At 04:56:38 PM On 03/21/2008 | - Website - |
Things and people can get off the island. The Others pretty much come and go as they please. It would seem no major surprise that the DHARMA Initiative or even Alvar Hanso himself could have gotten it off. Remember, it was his great grandfather who was the captain of that ship, and Hanso had been searching for the wreck for quite some time.
Once it was back in the regular world, there's all kinds of ways it might have ended up at auction. But it's pretty likely that Widmore was there specifically to buy it. Auctions usually publish a catalog of materials well in advance of the event. It seems quite likely that Widmore was searching for the island, knew the Black Rock had wrecked there, and bought the log so that he could search for the wreck. Remember, that was in 1996, so he had 8 years to go from buying the log to actually sending the Kanuna to the right place.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 04:44:01 PM On 03/22/2008 | - Website - |
Chris
Posted by Chris Reckling At 12:09:29 PM On 03/23/2008 | - Website - |
I hope you (all of you) are proud of yourselves. Because of this thread, I'm going to have to start watching the show (and thereby changing it's outcome, of course).
I hereby cast aspersions by suggesting that every single one of your mothers were never married.
Bah.
Posted by Devin Olson At 10:38:54 AM On 03/25/2008 | - Website - |
I like the explanations based on the Matrix plot, but much of this works even better if you base it on the plot from "Thirteenth Floor" where the characters discover they exist only inside a computer simulation. It's Matrix-like without the detractor of the "humans-as-batteries" premise. The interesting thing about the concept that the known universe exists as data running around inside a computer is that the programmer can create any laws of physics he likes. Thus, the need for wave/particle quantum theory to explain the universe is dictated by the programmer, not by reality. We are forced to conclude that subatomic particles exist as both particles and waves, simultaneously, because our observations can't be explained any other way. But, if the observations are only part of the game scenario, they don't have to be explained by some paradoxical theory. We can dismiss them by stating they were never actually observed.
The real support for the concept of the universe being computer-generated comes with string theory. The universe is composed of something that is 10000 times smaller than a quark. Could that be a bit of computer data? A bit has no dimensions that we can imagine, just as a shadow has no depth, but in the latter case we could see that next to a shadow there is a pile of photons, which do have mass, and therefore volume. Also, there are 2 or more types of strings, could one type be a 0 and another a 1? Thus, we can define reality, and objects, as a collection of 1's and 0's. Space and time do not exist (pun intended) to finish this line of thought here, but perhaps some of the genius bloggers represented here can draw some conclusions about life from the concept. Hey, it sure would be easier to explain coincidences! Global warming? Naw, the CPU cooling fan just quit.
Or, as one person said, "One day God is going to wake up and the universe will cease to exist."
Posted by The T in NTF At 10:58:40 AM On 03/26/2008 | - Website - |
@12 - You mean we could dismiss them because they aren't actually observations? I suppose this could all be the case, but the existence-as-scenario argument reaches for a meta-level that I'm not sure is meaningful. I mean, physics itself is just reverse engineering the program of reality, right?
Well, either way, I would point out J.J. Abrams presentation at TED on his mystery box as a good example of his near-obsession.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 07:55:59 PM On 03/26/2008 | - Website - |