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Since they have used the machine, it is the observer, and therefore collapsed the possible outcomes into a single result causing the deterministic outcome in the future. also, if you do not watch PBS Space Time on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g), shame on you! And enjoy the episode on quantum eraser!
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Apr 15, 2020 00:30
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I was confused by Lyndon, but I never brought it up because I kept worrying I was going to do it in an offensive way, because that's how my brain usually words things. I just assumed Lyndon was a woman, but then people kept referring to him as male. I was wondering if he was supposed to be a transman, but nothing really pointed to Lyndon being male for me besides being called "he" and I looked up the actress and she is a ciswoman so that confused me even more. I guess it makes sense if Lyndon is supposed to be some young prodigy, that you hire a young woman to play him so that he won't suddenly grow up halfway through making the show like someone else mentioned.
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Apr 15, 2020 00:49
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priznat posted:Yeah I just thought Lyndon was a prepubescent (perhaps late bloomer 13/14year old) child prodigy type and as portrayed it fit with that completely imo.
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Apr 15, 2020 01:14
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Tiggum posted:Same. I was very surprised when it turned out he was supposed to be 19. I guess they wanted him to seem extremely young while still being plausible as an adult, so they cast an adult who can pass for a young boy? Yeah I could still buy some stunted physically 19 year old I suppose but I must have missed it when they mentioned that. Having him actually be 13 or something would make it all the weirder.
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Apr 15, 2020 01:17
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I couldn't help but think of this show when I saw this news from Wolfram about (supposedly) coming close to finding a simple equation for the universe, and then computing the candidates forward to see who eventually gets our universe. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/
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Apr 15, 2020 01:38
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as a trans masc person myself, i read him as being trans because trans men are notoriously difficult to know the age of.
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Apr 15, 2020 02:46
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There's at least one trans person on every development team thanks to the Nobody Knows Your a Dog principle. Also this show is kind of a hot mess and up it's own rear end with a moral message ripped right out of the headlines (of 2009) but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna keep watching it. If you enjoy the quantum fuckery and want to see good scifi, read Greg Egan's book Quarantine.
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Apr 15, 2020 03:04
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Gnossiennes posted:as a trans masc person myself, i read him as being trans because trans men are notoriously difficult to know the age of. Tbh I think it’s sort of lame they even acknowledged it. I think a more interesting explanation would have been “Lyndon is Lyndon” draw your own conclusions or don’t because it doesn’t matter.
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Apr 15, 2020 04:43
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CodeJanitor posted:Since they have used the machine, it is the observer, and therefore collapsed the possible outcomes into a single result causing the deterministic outcome in the future. While this sounds cool, it doesn't make sense for the story when the machine is also producing many-worlds predictions. Eitherway you cook it, the show doesn't agree with the tenets of the Copenhagen interpretation.
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Apr 15, 2020 07:19
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Maybe using many worlds collapses the quantum state of history down to that one. So it's possible another Jesus said something else. When Lyndon used many worlds, he collapsed every possibility to the one he observed. When they only look at their own specific timeline, it's all static because there are still a bunch of possibilities. When they take those possibilities into account, it all collapses down to the one they see clearly.
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Apr 15, 2020 08:25
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T-man posted:Also this show is kind of a hot mess and up it's own rear end with a moral message ripped right out of the headlines (of 2009) but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna keep watching it. If you enjoy the quantum fuckery and want to see good scifi, read Greg Egan's book Quarantine. This show also reminded me a lot of Greg Egan's work, including Quarantine.
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Apr 15, 2020 08:38
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T-man posted:Also this show is kind of a hot mess and up it's own rear end with a moral message ripped right out of the headlines (of 2009) but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna keep watching it. If you enjoy the quantum fuckery and want to see good scifi, read Greg Egan's book Quarantine. I don't think you get the appeal of Alex Garland stuff at all tbh.
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Apr 15, 2020 09:13
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But do they have a shween??! Show's over folks, a character's sex/gender/sexual orientation is not explicitly specified so we can no longer continue this inquiry into how the universe operates. Of all the things that don't matter in the slightest, this sure is one of them.
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Apr 15, 2020 10:37
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OTC posted:But do they have a shween??!
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Apr 15, 2020 11:13
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Ham posted:While this sounds cool, it doesn't make sense for the story when the machine is also producing many-worlds predictions. Eitherway you cook it, the show doesn't agree with the tenets of the Copenhagen interpretation. Forrest argued that using Many Worlds makes the system useless because there's no way to be certain that a historical event was actually from our timeline or from a variant one, and that could still be true, but Katie pointed out that to Forrest that that he doesn't really care about that. His actual hang-up is whether reality absolves or condemns him for the death of his wife and kid. I think what's actually happening is that for the system to work as intended it just needs to acknowledge that Many Worlds exist, because otherwise its simulation doesn't actually match with the laws of reality. It's meant to be a twist of irony that Forrest's technological vision succeeds but only by accepting that his life could have turned out differently.
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Apr 15, 2020 13:17
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I don’t remember the exact quote but Lyndon said something like “it’s a perfect circle” like he was having some sort of revelation during his rendezvous with Katie. What was that all about? Also wouldn’t Forrest prefer Many Worlds? It’s still deterministic within a world so he can’t be culpable for the crash, but also means there are some worlds where his family is still alive? Best of both worlds 
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Apr 16, 2020 07:06
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The finale is on Hulu and uh, it does go the "Lily makes a choice and breaks Devs" route which I figured was the most boring possible outcome, but that happens fairly early on and the overall endgame is compelling. In the end I dug the hell out of this show. It's gonna stick with me for a while.
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Apr 16, 2020 07:07
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mr. unhsib posted:The finale is on Hulu and uh, it does go the "Lily makes a choice and breaks Devs" route which I figured was the most boring possible outcome, but that happens fairly early on and the overall endgame is compelling. Yeah, I was able to pretty much able to guess the first 20 minutes almost shot for shot, but everything after that was mostly unexpected. I thought it was a pretty satisfying end to the whole thing. Definitely more low key than I was expecting though. Overall great show. I loved it.
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Apr 16, 2020 08:30
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Even though what I guessed earlier came true, I'm still kind of disappointed. So they get to live in a simulation for the rest of their lives. I would hate that. Knowing that I'm actually dead and living in a fake world would be lame as hell. Especially since Forest gets his family back, and Lilly just gets her regular life. He gets to live a fantasy life, and she just gets to rekindle her relationship with her ex I guess? Not to mention that this is one of the good existences. So there are other versions of themselves out there living lovely lives that looks like there's no one else in the world or something. I enjoyed the ride getting here but it wasn't an ending I'm super happy with. Though I doubt there could be any ending to this show that I would be happy with.
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Apr 16, 2020 08:51
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I dunno if it's meant to be a happy ending. I mean, it sort of is, and that's how it's presented but it also raises a lot of questions. Y'all should check out the game Soma if you haven't. It deals with some of the same stuff involved in the ending of Devs. Probably in a more interesting way tbh. veni veni veni fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 09:04
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Cojawfee posted:Even though what I guessed earlier came true, I'm still kind of disappointed. So they get to live in a simulation for the rest of their lives. I would hate that. Knowing that I'm actually dead and living in a fake world would be lame as hell. Especially since Forest gets his family back, and Lilly just gets her regular life. He gets to live a fantasy life, and she just gets to rekindle her relationship with her ex I guess? Not to mention that this is one of the good existences. So there are other versions of themselves out there living lovely lives that looks like there's no one else in the world or something. I enjoyed the ride getting here but it wasn't an ending I'm super happy with. Though I doubt there could be any ending to this show that I would be happy with. There's no meaningful difference between being in a sim and 'the real world' in the show. It's even implied that the real world is a sim within a sim ad nauseam. That's what Stewart said 'uh oh' to in the previous episode. I agree with you though, the knowledge that you were for a fact in a sim would be devastating. Them letting her keep her memory is cruel and probably only for the benefit of giving the audience a happy-ish ending.
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Apr 16, 2020 10:35
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I loved this. While one aspect of it was predictable, I thought everything that followed was very satisfying, thought provoking and emotional.
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Apr 16, 2020 11:13
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Donnerberg posted:I agree with you though, the knowledge that you were for a fact in a sim would be devastating. Them letting her keep her memory is cruel and probably only for the benefit of giving the audience a happy-ish ending. I think she still has her memories because now she knows that Sergei has been lying to her, and she also realizes that her ex-boyfriend still loves her, despite her treating him like crap. Just like Forest she has been given a new chance to live a good life. Oasx fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 12:10
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Okay, yeah. That's a good point.
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Apr 16, 2020 12:14
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Well, that was incredibly dumb. If you can just choose to not follow the prediction and that's what breaks the sim, there's no way it could possibly have gotten this far. Even with only Katie and Forrest knowing anything about their own futures, there's no way both of them managed to stay perfectly on-script that entire time. Bullshit. And why would going against the prediction break the machine anyway? That implies that it predicted that its prediction was wrong, which makes no sense. Because otherwise it would just go on cheerfully predicting an inaccurate future beyond the point where reality deviated. Plus, if it's using many worlds now, isn't it predicting every possible future including the ones in which someone saw their own future and deliberately deviated from it? And the ending where they get to live on in the simulation, which is indistinguishable from reality; okay, so what? They already were. If the machine is simulating every possible future and past then it was already simulating this before they died in real life. In fact, as Forrest points out, determinism means that life is essentially a film and the present is just the bit of it you're seeing now, no more nor less real than any other bit of it, so they're not living in the simulation "now", they always were and always will be. And it doesn't even matter if the simulation keeps running or not (except from Katie's perspective if she wants to spy on them or something) because time is an illusion. The fact that they did exist means they do exist, just not necessarily in the bit of reality you're looking at right now. It's dumb. It's all dumb.
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Apr 16, 2020 13:39
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Eh. The ending really made me feel the show could have been cut down at least a couple episodes by just excising the largely pointless Russia plot and simply having a more direct A-B plot for Lily since almost everything about that character was underbaked and poorly acted (or given bad acting direction by writing in "channel Neo" in every scene). Stewart's actions are bizarre, the repeated minor tech rant is dumb, and the ending just shifts the whole show from one theme to another (Soma/San Junipero).
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Apr 16, 2020 17:00
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Donnerberg posted:There's no meaningful difference between being in a sim and 'the real world' in the show. It's even implied that the real world is a sim within a sim ad nauseam. That's what Stewart said 'uh oh' to in the previous episode. I don't think Stewart thought the real world was a simulation; He was saying that Devs contained entire universes. That's why he acts out at the end ("because I know what Devs is"). I know Katie calls it a sim in the denouement but I think the show makes clear that Forest and Lily are in one of the "many worlds". That's why Forest wants Lyndon back. Also, the Devs/Deus thing doesn't really make sense unless it's actually creating another world. I liked the whole "we are building God" direction the show ended up going in, but the whole "Lily exercises free will and commits original sin" analogy was clumsily done. On the whole that didn't really detract from the experience though. mr. unhsib fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 17:40
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mr. unhsib posted:I know Katie calls it a sim in the denouement but I think the show makes clear that Forest and Lily are in one of the "many worlds".
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Apr 16, 2020 18:02
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Tiggum posted:Well, that was incredibly dumb. Katie and Forest are fanatics who have complete faith that the machine works. Even if they went off script at some point by accident, their minor changes were unlikely to actually impact outcomes. Lily made a massive change and the overall outcome was basically the same.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:10
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Tiggum posted:There's literally no difference. That's the big problem with the ending: not only is the future fixed, but every possible future actually happens therefore nothing matters and everything is meaningless. Simulation and reality are the same, the decisions you make change nothing (because in other universes you made different decisions), and even time is an illusion. The message of the show is: live your life, or don't; eat an ice cream or kick a puppy or jump off a bridge; regardless of what you choose to do you will always have been going to do it and also you will never have done it and there's literally nothing you can do that has any meaning or consequence - even for yourself - because in some other universe you're doing the opposite. It totally vindicates Forrest. He was right; Sergei had no choice about betraying him and he had no choice about having him killed and it doesn't matter that they died and everything will be okay and life is just a movie we're watching so there's no reason to care about any of it. You might as well just watch a simulation of your dead daughter all day because she's just as alive as anyone else. Even if multiverse determinism is the answer to our universe, we only have one consciousness. Having countless clones doesn't make your personal life not matter to you. Katie and Forest emotionally suffered for going along with the script based on pure belief and Lily later demonstrated to them that they always had the power to not make those painful decisions. Katie didn't want Lyndon to die. She just thought Lyndon had to die because their god computer said so. Forest does get a happy ending, but it's because he makes a choice for the first time since creating devs.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:18
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Tiggum posted:There's literally no difference. That's the big problem with the ending: not only is the future fixed, but every possible future actually happens therefore nothing matters and everything is meaningless. Seen a few people say this and it's not true. "Many worlds" is not "every world".
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Apr 16, 2020 19:26
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Many worlds means that you walk down the street and in one world you trip, one world you turn right, one world you turn left, one world maybe a car hits you. but it doesn't mean that in one world you sprout wings and fly away.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:37
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ghostwritingduck posted:Katie and Forest are fanatics who have complete faith that the machine works. Even if they went off script at some point by accident, their minor changes were unlikely to actually impact outcomes. ghostwritingduck posted:Even if multiverse determinism is the answer to our universe, we only have one consciousness. ghostwritingduck posted:Katie and Forest emotionally suffered for going along with the script based on pure belief and Lily later demonstrated to them that they always had the power to not make those painful decisions. mr. unhsib posted:Seen a few people say this and it's not true. "Many worlds" is not "every world".
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Apr 16, 2020 19:49
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Tiggum posted:Well, that was incredibly dumb. Agreed but fun dumb. I got distracted when Lily apparently stutters and says Serjamie instead of either Sergei or Jamie as the reason she pulls the trigger. Real lack of agency she can’t even figure out which dead man she is getting revenge for but also did she just say Ser Jaime?  and also by the kind of thoughtlessness towards everyone else in the sim whose lives are just as meaningful as Lily and Forest’s and all the implications thereof. And how does Katie just edit people in and out with selective memories, real technical feat out of thin air
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Apr 16, 2020 21:52
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Show was pretty but stupid the whole way through. Basically just a highbrow version of Westworld. Could done without that creepy six-storey doll though. I also didn't appreciate the lazy "you tech bros are all just playing god" criticisms that kept being voiced, when the series showed off a more pertinent criticism. Why the hell was Forest such a passive sadsack despite the massive power he had? Isn't that like the billionaires who spend their time in bunkers asking psychiatrists how to prevent mutinies, because they're unable to imagine their power just addressing climate change?
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Apr 16, 2020 22:31
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His daughter and wife are dead, dude.
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Apr 16, 2020 22:38
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Mameluke posted:Show was pretty but stupid the whole way through. Basically just a highbrow version of Westworld. Could done without that creepy six-storey doll though. Show went a lot further than something like Westworld in tackling its own philosophical themes, and it should be applauded for tackling one of the most difficult concepts in both science and philosophy, it just spectacularly dropped the ball at the end and decided to go "No, humans do actually have agency beyond the confines of the material world (a soul or whatever)", and that either Lily has such a powerful soul that she can materially affect her own decisions, or that the others were content in letting determinism guide them and all humans in the end have the kind of agency/choice that makes decisions truly their own. It's a very dumb ending for a very thoughtful show - but quite a good ride anyway.
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Apr 16, 2020 22:50
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I've not seen this mentioned in any discussions so I'm almost certainly overthinking it but in the final shot, is Jamie wearing the spy watch? I initially took it as an 'aha! she's in a lovely world after all' reveal because of how it was framed but I dunno if I was just looking for poo poo that isn't there.
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Apr 16, 2020 22:59
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Kinda ended with a wet fart for me. The themes and ideas of the show were cool and it had the ability to pull some kind of twist, but it didn't.
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Apr 16, 2020 23:10
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Forest is God (even looks the part) creating the universe/reality (the machine) from heaven (Devs/Deus) which is initially constructed under determinism, since God would know everything to occur ahead of time. Along comes Lucifer (Lilly) (his unique, special angel above all the others) and adds Free Will/Knowledge (chaos, randomness) to the mix and evolves/tweaks god's plan into a many world system ultimately allowing for choice, which Lu gave to humanity to escape their deterministic slavery. Seems like a retelling of an interpretation of the sumarian/biblical creation story. Hard to prescribe the originating cause of Lucif..., er, Lilly's ability to choose, but could be seen as rebellion against the plan that god had forced. Pretty much explains her outright condemnation of Forest as wanting to be a God/Messiah and rebelling against his plan. Or Lilly is humanity stand in. The other Devs are God's Angels, though I think that would make Stewart or Lyndon Lucifer attempting to destroy creation, god and humanity, which I am a bit cautious of because of one being and old black guy and the other being a boy played by a woman. CodeJanitor fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 17, 2020 |
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Apr 17, 2020 00:27
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